The Black Chalice

Thirty-Eight

The deathbed confession took everything he believed about his life and made a lie of it.

"You were always a good boy," Sir Lowick said. "But I could not be prouder of the man you have become." Even those few words took their toll on him. He sank deeper into the sweat-stained bolster and closed his eyes. His lips moved, and for a moment no words came. His breathing became shallow and erratic as he struggled to master it; he was determined to say his piece. "I remember well the day I went to the king and petitioned for the right to finish your training." He managed a smile. "How could I forget the hot-headed boy I found waiting for me in Camelot? You were so determined to believe I intended to kill you…" He chuckled at that. It was a brittle sound. "But why would I kill my own flesh and blood? My own…" he trailed away into thoughtful silence. For a moment Alymere thought he had died, whatever he so needed to say still unsaid, but he opened his eyes again and said, "If only you had known the truth of who you were to me…"

"Uncle," Alymere said, softly. The word barely carried from his lips, and if Sir Lowick heard it, he gave no sign. He was somewhere else, lost inside his confession. Alymere let him talk.

"But why should you know my shame? Five people kept our secret, three of them have been dead for many years now, and the fourth is about to join them. By rights that ought to mean it is a secret easier to keep. The priest knows now, but he will never tell, and I should let it go to the grave with me, lad… but I can't. Won't. You deserve to know." He broke off, his entire body convulsing with each violent cough. By the time the hacking subsided he was too weak to wipe away the spittle from his lips. "Damn this body of mine. I am not ready. Not yet." He reached out, grasping Alymere's hand with surprising strength. It was the final rally; he would be gone soon. "Boy, I have one last lesson. Take from it what you will. All I ask is that you believe me, because you won't want to. Please remember I have nothing to gain from lies, not now… I have lied for too long. We all have."

"I promise," Alymere said, making another promise with his heart he couldn't keep with his head.

"I can't remember the first time I realised I was in love with Corynn. Your mother was special, lad, a brilliant, beautiful woman. It was certainly before she was married to my brother, though. Long before. Three friends growing up together in this place, it was always going to become two men in love with the same woman. It was impossible for it to be any other way when that woman was your mother, believe me. She was… incandescent."

"I don't need to hear this," Alymere said, but Lowick's grip only tightened and he found fresh resolve. Now was the time; his story would be told.

"I did love her, son, with all of my heart. Did you never wonder why I never took a wife? My heart was already given to another. I tried to stifle it, to kill it, but she was the world to me, and without her my world was nothing more than a broken land. There could be no healing. I didn't mean to do it. I didn't. You have to believe me, son. I didn't mean to do it."

"Do what?" Alymere asked, his heart already sinking. He didn't want to hear the dying man's confession. He didn't want to know. It would change everything. Everything.

"It was the worst moment of my life…" His voice trailed off, barely a whisper now as the last of his strength seemed to ebb out of it. The next few words were lost beneath the rasp-rattle of the dying man's breathing. If not for the fact his lips moved, Alymere wouldn't have known he was trying to speak.

"What are you trying to tell me, uncle?" He leaned in so close he could feel the knight's lips brush against his ear as they moved.

"You are my ghost."

"I don't understand."

"My ghost. You remind me. Whenever I look at you, I see her. See what I did. And remember my weakness. I am sorry, son. I am so sorry. You look like your father," and for a moment that was all he said. Alymere thought he was gone, and felt the sadness of grief well up within him, but before the tears came the knight whispered, "It is my one great regret that you never knew… that you never looked at me and…" another bout of coughing stole his words away. "I loved your mother. I loved my brother. I was weak. He was gone. At war. We were alone. She wouldn't… It should never have happened… I betrayed… myself. It was a mistake… but when I look at you I don't understand how such evil could create such a perfect thing… God forgive me."

And Alymere understood. How could he not?

But he didn't want to. He wanted to live in ignorance. He wanted to be a child again. This was the truth of his happy family; of why his mother would not live in the manor and died scratching about in poverty; of why Baptiste, his father's man, filled his head with so much hate for Lowick; of why the knight had turned up at Camelot two years ago to claim his stewardship; of all of it. He was his uncle's son. His uncle — this man he had come to admire and adore in equal parts — had forced himself upon his mother.

And now, having watched his father die once before, he was going to have to witness it all over again.

He backed away from the bed.

His mind raced.

It was such a gross betrayal… how could Lowick have lived with himself for so long…? How could… and suddenly an idea struck him. He didn't want to believe it. Couldn't. Wouldn't. But once the thought had taken root it was impossible to dig it out.

But it was idiocy. He'd seen his father die, that slow collapse of the self. It hadn't been self-inflicted. It had been cruel fate. Hadn't it? Could he have poisoned himself? No. Alymere shook his head. He was jumping at shadows now. He couldn't let his imagination run away with things. Roth hadn't committed suicide, but so many things made sense now. Making sense didn't make them better, though.

He pressed his fingers to his temples, feeling the coarseness of the burned skin beneath his fingertips. He turned away. He found himself staring at the door and wishing he could just walk back through it, out into the hallway with its creaks and groans and sighs and pretend his uncle had never made his confession.

His father…

If only he could step back a few moments in time. Just two, three; to the moment before the knight unburdened himself.

He could have lived out his life without ever knowing why his mother had refused to live in the same house as the knight.

It didn't help him to know why she had chosen to live in the filth and squalor of the village hovels and scraped and scrimped for food. It didn't make the humiliation of it all any more bearable. They had lived off the charity of others for years instead of in their rightful home.

He ran his hands down his face, stretching his features like dough.

It was too much.

He knew it would help one day, but not yet. It was all too raw. Too much, too soon. For now, the only person this unburdening of the soul helped was dying and had chosen to pass the knowledge on to him like some insidious canker. It soothed the knight's conscience. Alymere understood that, but he still couldn't bear to look at the man on the bed.

He paced the room, frustration welling up inside him — and beneath it, anger. The intensity of it surprised him. His breathing came harsher and faster, each breath shallower than the last, until he had to reach out to steady himself before he swooned. His vision swam. He clenched his fist, squeezing it so tightly his dirty fingernails dug into his palm and drew blood. It trickled between his fingers and down the back of his hand as he raised his fist. Alymere couldn't feel a thing. He looked down at the blood numbly, walked across to the window and braced himself on the sill. The world outside was unchanged. How could it be so? How could it be that everything inside this room had turned the world upon its head, and yet outside nothing looked in the least bit different?

He desperately wanted to lash out and hit something, to let the rage vent out of him.

He imagined driving his fist through the streaked glass.

Words raged within his mind. So many accusations, so much hatred. He slumped forward, his forehead resting against the cold glass.

Had Alymere been in his right mind he would have recognised the source of the voice — and its bleak nature. It was the same insidious voice the book used to goad him. But he was far from his right mind.

"I have to know," he said, staring out at the world through the window, "did she… were you… was it love… or… did you?" he danced around the word, unable to bring himself say it. Alymere drew in a deep breath and forced himself to ask, "Was I conceived in violence?"

"I am sorry, son."

Alymere closed his eyes. He felt his anger thickening. He dug his fingernails into the wooden sill, not feeling the splinters.

Do it.

He heard it plainly.

Kill him. End his life in violence. Take the pillows from behind his head and smother him. He's too weak to fight you. Do it. Make his death the mirror of your birth. In violence the son is begat, in violence the father is slain.

Alymere felt every bone and fibre in his body sing to the black anger coursing through it. The voice of the book was more than merely seductive, it was empowering. It spoke to his soul in a way that only another creature born out of violence could. They were aspects of the same hate. It went beyond a disembodied whisper, becoming in that moment a distinct voice within him — not of him, but in him. It didn't stroke his fragile ego or stoke his disgust at his own origin, it merely suggested:

Offer his death as a gift to your mother's shade. Let her spectre know vengeance. Let her rest, content that the bastard who raped her is burning in Hell for his sins. You owe her that much.

And it sounded so reasonable.