The Cup of the World (15 page)

‘They respect you,’ she said.

Once he had spoken, they had not challenged him. They had not questioned the marriage rite, or the wisdom of plunging Tarceny into armed confrontation with the King. They had not even asked Ulfin where he had had his news about the King's order to the boats, or how reliable it was. Perhaps they thought they knew. Phaedra thought she could guess too.

Who tells me that what I would do is impossible?

‘When were you planning to leave for Jent?’

She did not want to think of that.

‘I wonder whether you should go at all,’ he said. ‘I cannot come with you now. There is too much to do.’

‘There must be a priest in the castle, Ulfin. And this makes it the more urgent.’

‘Why do you say that?’

His father had harried the priests and monks of the March until few were left but the craven who would oppose nothing he did. So Ulfin had never known what it was to live with the blessing of the Church. Perhaps that was why he did not seem to understand how he was seen in the Kingdom, for not having restored what his father had done. Yet he himself had shown her how the priests were actors in the play of justice.

What law could there be here, if his lands were unblessed? Nothing could be done in the March that could not be undone. Even a marriage rite – certainly such a hurried rite as they had had – might be declared void if bishop and King agreed that it should be so. They would take her away from him, and say that what the two of them had done was mere wickedness.

He would not be ready for that argument. Neither was
she. She thought that if they quarrelled now they would both be utterly alone.

‘They will judge against us, in the Segne,’ was all she said. ‘Without even thinking—’

‘There is so little time. If there is fighting, you cannot travel out of the March in safety. Jent will be busy too, full of pilgrims for Holy Week.’

‘It must be a man we can trust, Ulfin; and that means we must choose him. Could – could we not send for the priest from the knoll? He would be—’

He had already said this was impossible. This time he did not even seem to hear.

‘Perhaps it will help. They may try to pretend I carried you away by force, the easier to dissolve our marriage before wedding you to Septimus. It will be good, therefore, if you are seen to go beyond the March freely. And it may also conceal our intentions. However, you must not risk capture. Give them as little warning as you can that you are coming. And you must be back within the March by the twelfth day of next month. It will not be safe to stay longer.’

Still his arm was round her, and her head was against his chest. For a moment neither said anything more. She could hear and feel his heart, thudding against her ear.

That was her world, her whole world in there. She had thought, in the first days of her marriage, that she could not have been more in love. It had been astounding to her how her feelings, which had been growing deep within her through all the years that the two of them had met in their dreams, had come upon her so quickly and with such force. Through the Cup they had built a bond between
them that she had thought was stronger than anything in the world. Now she knew that it was possible to love even more deeply. She loved him most of all when she thought that she might lose him.

Old soot, dislodged by the rain, hissed in the chimney. From the wall the picture of the young man regarded them with steady eyes. The border of the canvas was decorated with a great twisting snake, that reminded her of the dragon ring that now hung day and night upon a chain around her neck.

‘Is that Paigan?’

‘Yes.’

‘How did he die, Ulfin?’

He stirred against her, and sighed. ‘I am bound to tell you the truth, Phaedra. And so you may understand better why the priests do not love us, and why men take up arms when they hear the name of Tarceny

‘The truth is that my own father killed him, in this room. And that he did not lie long unavenged.’

n an opulent room of his palace, lit by high windows, the bishop sat like a worm at the heart of an apple. His walls were covered with pale-coloured drapes of soft pink and gold, but his gown was as plain as a novice's. On a small table at his hand were the remains of a meal of bread and water. He would have eaten before dawn, and would touch no more food before sundown. He could not have bathed for a week, nor did he wear oils or perfume. He smelled like a fieldsman from any peasant village.

These were the Lenten Days: the time before Easter when the Church demanded penitence. Even this bishop marked them in what he ate and wore; and devoted himself day after day to those who came to Jent at this time of year to beg his saint for forgiveness. And he was not pleased to be interrupted in his duties.

Red-faced and eyes popping, he leaned in his throne. ‘I am told you were most pressing to speak with me.’

He gave her no title or greeting. There was no mistaking his anger.

From beyond the door at her back Phaedra could hear
the shuffle of the endless crowd of penitents, standing or sitting on the stairs and floorboards of the bishop's palace. The patient pilgrims had watched her force her way past them, using her rank to beat down the objections of the bishop's priests and door-keepers, as she had pushed and argued her way to His Grace's door. They might wait more than a day for their turn to enter his chamber and speak with him of what they had done. She felt as if something had rubbed off them onto her from their thousand pairs of eyes.

She opened her mouth to speak, conscious of the silks and jewellery that she had put on that morning without a second thought.

‘Your Grace will have heard that since our last meeting I have taken the name of Tarceny’ she said.

‘I had. I must tell you it is not one that I love. Did you wish me to bless your marriage, or to annul it for you?’

Annul
it? No!

How could he say such a thing?

‘If … If it please Your Grace to bless us,’ she said carefully, ‘we shall be thankful. I came because I find my house has no priest, and I wished to beg of you—’

‘A priest? Indeed! It had been in my mind to ask what priest it was that had the gall to wed you.’

Surprised again, she did not answer. He must have seen by her look that she did not know the man's name.

‘Of what church, what order?’ he barked.

‘He was a holy wanderer, known to my husband.’

‘A mendicant!’

‘Such was Tuchred Martyr, sir.’

‘And such is every half-educated rogue who claims the
cloth to escape the noose if he is caught with another man's goods in his hands! And your father's blessing – you had that too, I suppose? Or did you send for it afterwards, to the man who raised you and guarded you all your little life, when you told him what you had done?’

Phaedra did not want to talk about Father. She was trying to remember whether the priest had worn a badge of one of the great orders – the Knotted Rope, the Lantern, the Staff … Surely he must have done, and yet she had not noticed. Her earrings jingled heavily as she shook her head, and her silks whispered to her. Damn them. And damn him too, in all his sackcloth and fuss!

The bishop raised his brows, waiting for her to answer, and she could not. She almost turned for the door then. But this was not Trant, and she was no longer a child.

‘Your Grace – I came in good faith, and thinking you would be glad of my purpose. If you wish to speak of my marriage, I will listen. But—’

‘Listen
then. I do not love it that a child should wed without her father's let, or that a father should be so served after years of care. Nor do I love it that the royal house should be slighted. Nor do I love it that the Kingdom should be brought once again to the brink of war. I do not jest about marriage. Before long, some prince of the Church, and most likely myself, will be asked to judge on yours. When that time comes, it would be well for you to produce this mendicant, and for him to prove as you say. What you are able to tell of him now does not reassure.’

Silence seeped back into the room after his words. With it, once again, came the soft shuffles of the pilgrims
beyond the door. The nearest of them must have heard everything he had said.

‘Your Grace … I ask that you help me find a priest for my people at Tarceny who have had none these twelve years.’

‘Your people. And is it for your
people
that you ask this?’

She could only meet his look. ‘Every soul in my house needs blessing, sir. I was not taught otherwise.’

He was trying to stare her down. She waited.

He rose, and began to pace to and fro before the throne. He was still angry – if anything he was angrier now than when she had first entered. She could see the dark wrinkle of the veins in his red cheeks.

‘Blessing,’ the bishop said. ‘In the Lenten Days, my blessing is for those who come to me in penitence.’

‘Indeed it gives me sorrow, sir, that I have had to interrupt your business today’ For that, at least, she could apologize (as if she could possibly have delayed here the length of Holy Week while he gave audience to a thousand pilgrims, one by one!).

But if he wanted to hear her regret her marriage, he would wait for ever.

‘In truth,’ she went on, ‘I have had very little time, and must leave Jent again tomorrow. Yet it did seem to me’ – she looked him in the eyes again – ‘to
both
my lord and me, that our household should have one at least who would pray for it, and that this was the first and most urgent of all the matters that awaited us on our return there.’

He had turned away, and was looking out through one of the great, glassed windows that lit the room. It was a
huge thing, made of many diamond panes and worth, she supposed, as much as all the furniture and decorations of the room put together. She could not tell what he was looking at, but he must have a fine view over his city and the people who thronged to his shrines and palace. His hands were clasped behind his back. One fat thumb moved slowly round and round in the palm of the other hand. He was thinking. She could not see his face.

Surely, now he must see past his anger to where his own interests lay. Whatever the man thought of Tarceny he would have a dozen reasons for wanting to rebuild the Church there. It would be discourteous, even dangerous, for him to turn down her proposal and to send the wife of his most powerful neighbour packing without ceremony. At seventeen years she thought she knew the realities of power.

‘Well,’ he said at last, ‘it would be good if the eyes of the Angels were open in Tarceny again. I will think on it. But at present I have not the usual crowd of ordered idiots clamouring at me for a living.’

‘Have you not, Your Grace? I … I am surprised that you should say so.’ Bishops were forever having to manage the demands of their priests to find them places.

‘Try me, and I may surprise you more. I have said that I shall think. Enough of this. There is a matter in which you may oblige me.’

‘Your Grace?’

‘This damned north wind,’ said the bishop. ‘It has blown for days, and few boat-captains will set out against it.’

‘Indeed, Your Grace.’ Did he want her to change the weather?

‘There are many good folk who have come to this city
in faith and find it hard to return. One in particular concerns me.’ He motioned her to stand by him at the window. ‘Down there …’

The window looked out on the mighty spires of Jent. To her right was the old shrine of St Tuchred Martyr, with its white-finger tower and pointed roof. Beside it rose the new cathedral, a massive grey shape six times the size of the old shrine. It had been building for some twenty years now, and another lifetime would pass before it was completed. Huge crowds of Lenten pilgrims thronged and jostled at its doors. The square below the palace was seething with them, with their robes, their staffs, their asses and their voices.

The bishop was pointing to the north side of the square, where the ground dropped suddenly. There was a low stone balustrade with a clear view of the lake and the lower town. A single figure was standing there – a woman in a pale gown.

‘Her turn came to speak with me three days ago. She has walked in the square each morning since, waiting for some way of returning to her home near Watermane. Since you say you must be on the road tomorrow—’

‘You wish me to carry her north with me?’

She must have let her temper show in her voice, for the bishop frowned at her again.

‘I had thought it was the custom for the great of strength to let others travel with them for safety on the road,’ he said heavily. ‘Indeed I remember that your father – and his daughter, for he had a daughter then – did join my company on the road from Tuscolo not two years ago. Do not mistrust me. I am not going to give you a leper or
a brothel-keeper, although I have plenty whom it would do you good to meet. This is a knight's lady, but her party is too small to risk travelling by land on its own.’

Phaedra was about to ask why, in that case, the woman had not joined any of the caravans and bands of travellers that must leave Jent's gates every day. But he raised his finger to forestall her.