The Cup of the World Read online

  For Robin

  Contents

  PART I: THE MAN IN THE DREAM

  I The Courts of the King

  II The Prisoner

  III Suitors and Chessmen

  IV Steel and Darkness

  V The Priest on the Knoll

  VI The Warden's Answer

  VII The Windows of Jent

  VIII A Face on the Road

  IX Ill News by Water

  PART II: THE PALE PRIEST

  X Pain

  XI Angels and Shadows

  XII On the Stair

  XIII Chatterfall

  XIV The Man in the Reeds

  XV The House in the Hills

  XVI The Place of White Stones

  XVII The Deep of the Cup

  PART III: THE TRAITRESS

  XVIII Cold Morning

  XIX Ordeal

  XX Phaedra's Price

  XXI The Powers of Iron

  XXII The Powers of Shadow

  XXIII South Wind

  PART I

  THE MAN IN THE DREAM

  I

  The Courts of the King

  haedra did not know the way, in the unlit corridors of the King's house. She was following the older girls through the shadowy passages, going by their whispers, the scuff of their feet and the sounds of their suppressed excitement. The noises led her to the left, and then to the right, past storerooms and scroll rooms and rooms for purposes that she could not guess. The shutters on the windows were all closed. No one had thought to bring a light, because it had been bright day outside when they had hatched this plan between them. She supposed that someone up at the front must be leading.

  There was a pause ahead. The girls had reached a door. From beyond it there rose a great babble: the sound of a crowd in a large room.

  Phaedra had imagined that the royal court was a silent place, like a service in chapel where people only spoke when necessary. She had not expected this unruly noise. Perhaps it would make it easier for them to get into the throne hall without being noticed. She had no idea what would happen after that. She had never seen a witch trial before.

  A trumpet sounded from ahead of them. The girls had the door open. Phaedra saw the shapes of their heads and shoulders against the light beyond as they stepped one by one through the doorway. She made her way out after the others onto a narrow wooden gallery that ran along the wall of a huge vaulted hall. The babble she had heard was dying. Somewhere below her, a voice had begun to speak. She found a place at the rail, and drew breath. She knew she should not be where she was, looking down at the throne hall of the King.

  It was hard to see.

  From the high windows the sun shot, barring the hall with rays. Torches glowed feebly. Gold threads gleamed upon banners that swayed in the columns of heat. Below her was the crowd – knights and barons and nobles, packed against either wall so that the long aisle was clear. Where the sun fell the men stood lit in white silver, every detail plain from the badge of a house to the blink of an eye. Their faces were tense, bearded, craning for a view. Between the light beams was a mass of shapes and silhouettes, in deeper and deeper shadows up the hall to the throne. The air pricked with the sweat of two hundred men in heavy cloth. Little noises washed around the walls: clinks, shifting feet, the squeak of leather, and half-sentences murmured into neighbours' ears. The men spoke like hunters, a-tiptoe in the forests. And the beast that stalked the thickets was the imminence of Death.

  She looked at once for her father, down among the mass of unknown men. He must be there – but had he seen her? If he had seen her, he might be angry that she had come when she should not have done. If she was going to have to face that later, it would be better to know now. But she could not pick him out, because she was a stranger to the court and did not know where to look for him. She did not know where he would stand among all these nobles: high, surely, but how near to the King?

  She could see the King – that white-bearded figure upon the High Throne. Above him the sun of his house blazoned the wall with dull gold. In the shadow to his right sat a younger man – Prince Barius, upon the Throne Ochre, bolt upright with a sword across his knees. And the younger man to the King's left must be Prince Septimus, who was to be knighted that evening at the same feast during which she was to be presented.

  To one side of the thrones stood a small group of bishops, robed and capped with gold, and their tonsured priests. On the other were the chosen officers of the court – a rank of serious faces, with gold chains around their necks. There were guards before the dais. Their helms and axes and polished shoulder-pieces flickered with reflected torch fire.

  A baron stood in the aisle, in the last streak of sun before the throne. His black beard and doublet paled in the glare, and the skin of his face was dead white, except for the solid little shadow below the tip of his nose. He was facing full into the light. Surely he could see very little; but every soul in the hall could see him: his heavy brow; his face strong. He must have placed himself deliberately in that ray of sun the moment the trumpets had died. The voice she had heard came from a figure in the gloom beside the baron: a man in a cap and robe who was reading aloud from a scroll.

  ‘… Didst consort with fell spirits … didst conspire with rebels … didst most foully plot violence by magic, against us a baron of the realm … we call on our liege for justice and an end to evil … that thou shalt suffer death under the law of this land …’

  Somebody else was standing in the expanse of gloomy flagstones. It was a woman, alone. Her head was bowed a little. And it seemed to Phaedra that not a face in the crowd changed as the charges poured on over this creature. Their frown ran from the steps of the King to the gates of the hall.

  Phaedra had not known what a witch would look like. If she had expected anything, it was some cackling nightmare, caged like a beast to thrill a fair. She had not been prepared for a plain woman, only a few years older than herself. So this was the one on whom the baron wanted revenge. This was the woman who would lie in an unshriven grave, buried headless with a stake through her heart. Phaedra drew another long breath, and wondered if her limbs were really trembling in that stifling air.

  The reading ended. The accused woman was replying, in a voice too low for the watchers to hear. Her speech did not take long. The space that followed was filled with coughs and the murmur of a crowd shifting its feet.

  From the shadows the King spoke: a question. The baron was nodding. The King beckoned. Six retainers came forward carrying long swords. They laid them in a row on the floor between the baron and the woman, alternating hilt and blade so that three pointed each way. A herald bellowed down the hall.

  ‘The King yields judgement to the eyes of Heaven. Let any that feel the right of this cause come forward before the third trumpet. I say, let them come forward who are ready to prove the truth with their body!’

  The King raised his hand, and a trumpet blew.

  The watchers jumped. Sudden, shattering, the tongue of the brass was far more powerful than the voices preceding it. At once two knights stepped forward from the crowd. They took their places side by side at the hilts of swords before the baron. Somewhere in the gallery someone was whispering their names, as if these were well-known fighters. A moment later the baron himself took a pace forward to stand by the hilt of the third sword on his side. Again he placed his feet carefully, so that the light bathed him from head to toe for everyone to see.

  Then nothing happened. People whispered to one another on the balcony and down below. No one moved from their place. Phaedra stared down at the woman, standing alone with her back to the gallery.

  Come on. Come on. Why did they not blow? Had the herald fallen asleep on his feet? Beyond the hall the sun had alr
eady shifted. A patch of shadow had crawled over the baron's foot. He had not noticed.

  There was movement in the lower hall. Someone had emerged from the crowd down there, and was standing in the empty aisle. He was looking around, looking back, like a little boy who had been told to step up by a parent, and had forgotten at once what it was he was supposed to do.

  Now he had begun to walk up towards the throne. He crossed a shaft of light, and appeared as a plain-looking knight in mail. His head was bare, but his face, and his device, were obscure for long seconds more until he stepped through the last sunbeam and threw his shadow for a moment across the baron's knees. A heavy, stubbly cheek showed briefly under lank hair. A red hound danced on his surplice. In the gloom before the throne the man bowed to the King. Then he sidled to his right and, without appearing even to look at the woman behind him, stood at the hilt of a sword on her side. As he did so the trumpets sounded at last.

  Now the whispering increased. The change was palpable. Without a champion the woman would have been a witch. Her sentence would have been passed and done before nightfall. One man had thrown the matter open. Men would die to close it.

  The dazzle of the light was fading; high above the hall thin clouds veiled the sun. The contrasts blended into detail that became clearer to the eye. The baron and his knights were looking woodenly at their opponent. The newcomer wore the gear of a poor manor lord – one of the ‘dog-knights’ of the Kingdom, who owned no master but the King and no follower but some faithful hound. He was looking at his feet, at the throne, to the woman at his back. Perhaps the full implications of what he was doing had only just come to him. The woman too was no longer fixed by the row of armed men before her. Her eyes moved from her feet to the crowd, and then up to the gallery. She was slender, and wore a simple blue dress. Her long hair shone a deep brown, and was adorned with a few sparse yellow gems. For a moment Phaedra looked down into a pale, triangular face, with large eyes and a pronounced nose: an expression bewildered and alone. Phaedra saw she was afraid.

  ‘They'll kill them both, now,’ muttered a voice in the gallery. ‘Him, then her.’

  It was like a dream – worse than a dream, for Phaedra felt that in her dreams she was never as helpless as here. She wanted to turn away, leave the hall, and not see how it ended. But she did not know her way through the dark of the King's house.

  And, just as in a dream, she could suddenly see her father's face clearly. He stood among the nobles in the opposite aisle. He had not looked up. His big, bearded face was frowning at the scene before him. He did not like what he saw. What could he do? Phaedra felt sure he wanted to do something. He was quick enough to say what he thought was right and wrong at home. Would he tell the King, in front of all these people, that this trial was wrong? Surely not. The King had said that it should take place.

  Would he come out and be a champion?

  But then he would have to fight! Fight men who wanted to kill him, one after another, with none of his soldiers to help! She did not dare think what might happen.

  Near where Father stood, a young man stepped out from his place and stared down the hall. He must be thinking that if someone else would take up the second sword for the witch, then he would take the third. The third man would fight last, and would have the best chance of surviving. But no one else moved, and the hand of an older knight pulled the young man back. The sibilants of fierce whispers carried across the floor. And Father had not moved, either.

  She wanted to look away. Somehow she would find her way down the back corridors and out of this place. Still she did not move. Neither did the three fighters, the woman, or the man of the Dancing Hound.

  Come on. Come on. Come on.

  The knights looked to the trumpeter, who looked to the King. The King did not sign for the last trumpet. He had turned in his throne and was talking with a herald and a counsellor. The point of his finger moved gently as he spoke. The princes were leaning from their seats to hear. For a moment all the hall strained to catch the King's words. The herald and the courtier were looking doubtful. The King seemed to repeat a short phrase, twice, and again. He turned back to meet the gaze of the baron. The herald was coming forward to stand beside the trumpeter at the lip of the dais.

  ‘Men have declared themselves willing to die for the right.

  ‘But before blood is shed, the King will consider this further. The justice day is ended. The subjects of the King will depart.’

  At once the crowd broke into sound. They were surprised – even alarmed. The thing was incomplete. If it wasn't settled one way or another, what then? The long dismissal fanfare began, raggedly, as though the trumpeters had been caught unawares. Now the door guards understood that the audience was over. The doors were thrown open. The packed ranks of the knights and courtiers dissolved from their places into a milling, talking, shouting mass. Phaedra saw the baron standing stock-still in his place. She could not see his expression, for he was staring away from her up at the throne. The white-bearded King looked back at him, unmoved.

  The woman had disappeared somewhere, presumably under guard. Courtiers were arguing with the knight of the hound. A marshal looked up and saw the gallery was occupied, and by whom. He waved them away with the back of his hand, frowning, as though there had been something obscene or improper that the onlookers should not have seen. A guard joined him, repeated his gestures, and called for a comrade. The girls fled.

  They ran down the ill-lit corridors and stairways that wove in rigid tangents around the royal kitchens and storerooms. Hands rattled latches that stuck and gave way. Their feet clattered and voices called to one another in the dark and hurry. There was alarm and laughter in them, which rose more loudly and with more laughter as they drew further from the hall and dropped to the level of the little courtyard from which they had gained entrance an hour before. The door was ajar, as they had left it. It swung under the hand of the leader to admit the heat and glare of the day. They poured into the courtyard, blinking, breathing hard.

  ‘Oh!’ said one. ‘Was any of them more handsome than Barius?’

  They were a half-dozen young ladies of the court. Phaedra, at fifteen, was the youngest. None was older than twenty. Like Phaedra, they were children of important men who had come for the great banquet the King would hold that night to mark the final victories over the rebel barons, the end of summer and the knighthood of his second son. With all the fighting around the Kingdom, it was years since there had been an occasion like it. Phaedra was not the only one who had never been to court before. Most of them had only met the previous day.

  They were dressed informally, for they had no ceremony until the feast that evening (and certainly no business attending the King's justice). Even so their long, lightly woven gowns in blue and green and yellow made them a gay party in that stony little courtyard with the well and the stunted olive tree.

  ‘Do you think he saw us?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Prince Barius, of course—’

  ‘Why didn't they fight? What will they do?’

  ‘I'll swear they were going to drag her up and cut her head off on the steps – right in front of us …’

  ‘… I waved to him. I'm sure he looked up at me.’

  ‘Someone put that dog-knight up to it. I wonder who?’

  ‘Maybe he fell in love with her – then and there!’

  ‘Dibourche was gobbling, wasn't he? Like a turkey. He nearly had us seized. If he saw me he'll speak to my father and I'll be packed off to the city convent for the rest of our stay’

  ‘If you are lucky. He's looking for a wife, I hear. Maybe he'll ask your father—’

  ‘No, no! Amanthys, don't say that …’

  ‘Gobble, gobble …’

  More laughter. The sun beat upon the courtyard with the full force of early afternoon. Two or three of the girls were sitting on the rim of the well, catching their breath in the shade of the tree.

  ‘I suppose a prince can't just step down from
his throne and defend an accused woman. But I'm sure he wanted to …’

  ‘Perhaps we should all commit witchcraft …’

  ‘Oh!’

  ‘… or say we had, tonight. Then we would be tried one by one before the throne until he chose which of us to rescue!’

  The air was hot in the little well-court, and very still. Nothing stirred the shadows of the olive boughs, or the dry leaves upon the cobbles.

  ‘That is the silliest idea I have heard since Hallows,’ said the girl called Amanthys.

  ‘You'd be killed—’

  ‘You might be rescued by some dog-knight from the back of nowhere who would throw you over his carthorse and lump you off to a flea-ridden two-roomed manor house to stone olives for the rest of your life. And good riddance.’

  ‘Do you know,’ said the oldest girl, whose name was Maria, ‘that because some dog-knight from the back of nowhere is ready to fight, that woman may be innocent? But if none of them had been prepared to fight those cutthroats Baron Seguin had with him, we'd have known she was guilty and had her killed? And now the King says he's going to think about it. Why didn't they think before? They can't just leave it like that—’

  ‘It was a show,’ Phaedra broke in. ‘The King had agreed with the baron what was going to happen. All justice is a show, like that.’

  The others looked down at her, half-strangers.

  ‘You've made a study of these things, I suppose.’ said Amanthys.

  Phaedra was from a lonely house. She was not used to company like this, as well-born as she, and a little older.

  All justice-giving is a play' she told them. ‘If a man is good at the play, and settles the quarrels in ways that stay settled, the people he judges are happier to be ruled by him. And then they don't fight. When Father holds court at Trant he tries to fix or agree the outcome beforehand. Then he summons everybody to his court, where he puts the King's keys of the castle on the table in front of him, to remind everyone that the King has chosen him to be Warden. He makes Brother David – our priest – stand behind his chair, to show that justice comes from Heaven. And they try the case and decide what he's already decided.’