The Cup of the World (43 page)

‘You mean you would have offered yourself …?’

‘Not if I could – help it. I hoped time would find me a third chance. But if nothing else …’

He had demanded Ambrose of her. Yet he had also warned her to keep Ambrose from him. If he had truly
been caught in this web as a youth … If he had twice put himself at risk for his child's sake … For the first time since she had stepped through the door, Phaedra felt her conviction waver. The bitter clarity that had driven her speech was blurring. And as the wrong she perceived in him diminished, the things she had done seemed darker.

He must have seen her uncertainty, and known that his words had counted. He looked at the priest, as if to see whether Martin had understood too.

He froze.

Then, like a snake, his hand shot out and clutched the corner of the priest's hood. The sudden movement made him cry with pain. The hood fell.

It was not Martin's face beneath.

A small head, almost hairless, which wore a thin circlet of gold. Yellow-grey skin that stretched tightly over the skull. Eyes were set in deep sockets like pools in dark rock. The grey priest looked impassively down at the man before him.

‘Once again you twist the truth, son of Talifer,’ he said. ‘You shrank from giving me the boy. Yet you supposed that if, despite you, I should come past your pebbles and take him, you should be both debtless and blameless, and that fault should lie with the three witless women you left to guard him.

‘I will have my price. There is no third chance. There is no second chance. If a man would cheat me I take my price twice over. Your life is forfeit to me, son of your father and self-made King. Yet you shall not so save your son. The boy cannot stay within the ring for ever. One day I shall have him too, and then our bargain will be fulfilled.

‘Except for this,’ he went on, turning to Phaedra. ‘I make one offer only to you. Twenty years of life, for either your husband or your son. The other to be mine at once, or as soon as a message may reach across the lake. Choose quickly’

Phaedra could not answer. How had he come here? Where was Martin? But Martin's voice was sounding beyond the door, talking with Chawlin; puzzled, but unworried: ten feet from where she stood eye to eye with the grey priest.

‘You think against me, daughter of farmers? You cannot. Your life is mine three times. I sent the priest-fool to find you among the rocks. I sent the boy-fool to stand for you at the swords. And most of all because I woke the girl-fool who lay starving her body for a love that had already betrayed her. You are mine. You cannot deny it.

‘Choose. Twenty years is a good life. Many a child born tomorrow will die sooner. Or fifty years for the man, and maybe you will get more children yet.’

Could he deliver Ulfin from execution? Would he? But she could not offer her child's life. He must know that. He must know, and Ulfin must know, what choice she would make. If he had spared her, it was to be his tool. They were waiting for her to speak. The world was his eyes, like black pits, willing her towards the edge.

And a little white stone that she clutched in her hand.

He had spared her to bring Ulfin defeat. He had spared her for this moment. He wanted Ulfin to hear her condemn him. And still she would have bargained with the grey priest.

‘I refuse.’

‘You may not refuse. I will have one or other, or both. Choose.’

Nothing was real but the little stone that had been sent to her by her son.

‘No.’

‘Twenty-five years!’

Suddenly she laughed. She could not guess what purpose moved the priest. But he had shown weakness, and although she was still afraid she knew that she both must and could resist. And Ulfin was struggling to raise himself, his eye fixed on the apparition, the lamp shadows sweeping across his face; rising behind him like a black, twisted angel on the wall.

‘Old man! Creeping, scheming dotard! What do your bargains and promises mean but the corruption of those that treat with you? Have you done nothing in three hundred years but bring ruin on each of your brothers' houses? Because they left you no land but that you could not hold. Envious, joyless, cheated! Hear me. I will pay your price –
our
price – with my body. But then be you gone, for my house is debtless to you.’

‘You are mine, and your house will be mine, and only then will I be done with you.’

But Ulfin answered, Ulfin and more than Ulfin, for there was a light behind his eye and a power within his words that came from far beyond the man.

‘Hear these words, Paigan Wulframson. Listen well. Least of your father's sons. By the last of your father's sons—’

‘Enough!’ The priest spread his arms. The room was filling with shapes and shadows. There was a sudden,
strong smell as if of dank stone. Strange mutters and cries swelled around them. Ulfin's voice rose above them, pained and cracking, yet suddenly with the weight of trembling stars.

‘By the last of your father's sons shall you be brought down!’

And then they were on him.

Shapes with low, hooded faces rose around the bed. Floorboards broke. She saw Ulfin's head forced back, his leg kicking. Something with eyes and a beak billowed in front of her, buffeting her sideways like a blast of wind. She fell. She heard Ulfin scream.

‘Chawlin!’ she cried. ‘Chawlin!’

The room was crowded. The door erupted inwards. Chawlin was there, sword in hand. Martin was at his shoulder. She saw Chawlin seize a shadowy limb, saw the creature turn and
crow
in the face of its challenger. Chawlin recoiled with a cry.

Martin was yelling the names of the Angels. Phaedra scrambled on her hands and knees, and struck with her fist that held the pebble against a leg of stone. It jerked away, dragging her with it over the broken floor. The sword whipped and sang above her head. There was a clatter and a shriek. Feet were running in the corridor. Men were in the antechamber. Everyone was shouting or shrieking.

They had the sword. Two, three clawlike hands clutched the blade, black against the bright metal. Chawlin was pulling at the hilt. Past the gibbering, crowding things Phaedra saw across the room the face of the grey priest watching her. Then he turned into the wall and was gone.

The room was empty.

‘Dear Michael!’ said Chawlin, and leaned against the wall.

The chamber stank. The floorboards were scarred and splintered. The bed was broken. Ulfin lay huddled in a mess of blood beside it. Phaedra crawled over to him, and stopped when she saw the wounds. The chest, the arms, the legs, the face were all gouged with bloody tracks. Martin was at his shoulders, turning him. She bent over the wreck of the man.

Even now he was not quite dead. His good eye flickered at her. The mouth moved.

‘Raise – the King's stone. Hillmen – help. Raise …’ He tried to cough, and could not.

‘Ulfin?’ she whispered. There was no answer.

Someone was kneeling at her side. It was Septimus. She looked at him, and realized that the room around her was crowded with his followers.

‘These are the same wounds my father bore,’ he said. ‘And my brother.’

‘And, I guess, the old lord of Tarceny’ someone added. ‘Justice has a hard face. Is he dead?’

‘Yes,’ said Septimus.

After a while the prince rose to his feet. ‘Madam,’ he said. ‘There is much here that may be guessed at. And much, no doubt, that will never be known. But if you know any of the causes of what has passed here, you have a duty to reveal them to me.’

‘I do,’ she said. Gingerly she eased the cord that held the little black key from around Ulfin's bloody neck, and rose to her feet. She was thinking how his heart had beaten against the key to his secrets, as hers had beaten against
the ring he had given her. His heart was still now. Hers too.

She looked around her. Aun was there, and Tancrem, Chawlin, Septimus and a half-dozen others, watching her as if she were about to grow horns and a tail.

‘If you will follow me.’

She led them to the War Room. The black chest was on the table, locked. The wood gleamed in the lamplight, writhing with shadows and the carved creatures upon it. She saw Chawlin peer closely at them and look away. She tried the key, and it clicked in the lock.

The chest was no longer empty. Within lay a stone bowl, with a stem and a base like a large cup. Beside it on the cloth lay a book. Septimus lifted the bowl out and looked at it curiously. There was something like a snake carved around the rim.

‘Rude workmanship,’ said someone.

‘It was cut by the hand of a prince,’ she said.

‘Did he show you the purpose of these things?’

‘No. The Cup I have seen only in my dreams. He would gather water in it, in which to see far off, and so defeat his enemies.’ Aun was nodding. ‘He could cross great distances swiftly, and pass doors that were locked. It helped him in this. And – there were other uses.’ She remembered the taste of the water in her dreams, warm, and sweet as the faintest honey. ‘The book I have never seen before, although I guessed it must exist. I do not know if there is now any witchcraft in them. I believe it came through them, from beyond.’ She used the word
witchcraft
for the sake of her listeners. It had a strange feel on her tongue.

Septimus lifted the book and turned a few pages. She could tell at once that neither he nor any of those craning over his shoulder could read well.

‘It would be best to destroy them,’ someone said.

‘Not yet,’ said Septimus. ‘There may be something that can be learned from them about this evil that has threatened us. But we shall not treat them lightly. The Cup shall remain here, secret and guarded. And Lord Lackmere, you shall take the book into the south. Keep it in your home, and let none approach it without my permission.’

Aun hesitated for a second, as the book was put into his hands. He looked at Phaedra and then at Septimus, who was already returning his attention to the Cup. Phaedra could see, written on his face, his dislike of the mission he had been given. It was not just the book. He did not want to go into the south, to return to his family and live at home. And from Septimus's bearing she guessed that the prince knew it, and was nevertheless sending him away. If Septimus had not said what he planned for Trant or Tarceny it was clear they would not include Aun.

Ulfin had been right. They were already beginning to move against each other. Whoever Septimus left to occupy Tarceny would be well placed. A widow who wanted to assert her position as landlord in Tarceny and Trant would need a powerful following, allies, and most probably a new husband. They all knew that. And if Septimus indeed intended that she should sit beside him on the throne in Tuscolo, and could find the right sort of men to hold Trant and Tarceny for him, why, he would be stronger than many a king in memory.

She felt very tired. And all at once she was angry. These half-people! Competent butchers of men! They were brave and spoke fairly but in the end they shared all manner of Ulfin's faults without having an ounce of his knowledge or vision. And yet they would shape her future for her. She would be a piece on the board, loved and hated only for the advantages she might bring. How long before one of them remembered whose son Ambrose was? Septimus would abide by his word, but how many barons or counts might see themselves as kingmakers? She could not allow that to happen.

She wanted to leave, and find somewhere in all this house – her house – where she might rest. Yet there was one more thing.

‘May I see the book, please?’ she said. ‘It will not take long.’

Aun passed it to her. He did not wait for Septimus's nod to do so.

It was heavy in her hands. She leafed through the pages of vellum, some blank, some written in Ulfin's flowing script, aware that the men were all looking at her. She could not be long, in case they started to think that she was researching some spell.

It was not a book of spells. It seemed to be more of a narrative. She turned the leaves. The first entry was headed ‘PRINCE PAIGAN’ and ran for pages, broken into short or long sections that recorded each meeting. Her eye fell on some sentences that contained the words ‘King's Stone’, but they told her no more than she had guessed. The next was headed ‘PAIGAN’ again.

The next entry was her own.

She was taking too long. The men were growing restless. Septimus was frowning, jerking his head slightly as if to indicate that Aun should take the book back. Aun remained impassive, waiting.

‘A moment more,’ she said.

Quickly her eye fell down the pages. Something in her cried out to stop, and weigh every word. There was no time. She skipped ruthlessly past Ulfin's impressions of a nine-year-old child by the pool, past their early encounters when the girl was learning not to jump and look round as the voice addressed her. Words such as ‘wit’ and ‘lovely’ rose from the page, and she ignored them.

She wanted more than that. And there was more. There were lines that began with words like ‘She understands quickly’; or ‘She nurses a deep sadness that I cannot touch …’ There was page after page of it.

But the room around her was thick with armed men and suspicion. The world was not safe, not safe for her to linger with the secrets of a man's love, to find if they were true.

‘Thank you,’ she said, and shut the book abruptly. ‘Your Highness, I would have your leave to withdraw. It is late, and I am unused to such a day’

Septimus nodded.

‘There was something else in here,’ said a bearded knight, as she returned the book to Aun. ‘See, the cloth is marked.’ He jabbed a stubby finger at the outlines left by
the box of white stones, and looked up at her, waiting for an explanation.

‘I have no knowledge of that,’ she said.

It cost her nothing to lie in that company.

nce more she was waiting for the dawn. The old moon was low above the horizon, the narrowest fingernail of yellow silver, with a whisper of the new moon in its arms. A ghostly light glowed upon the shadow to show the full disc against the sky. She was at the window in the big room in Mistress Massey's house at Aclete. She had risen and dressed with Hera's help, quietly and with as little light as possible. Now Hera had gone. She was alone, turning memories in her mind.