The Black Chalice

Fifty

A new moon lit the sky.

Men gathered around the bonfires, waiting for the signal to light them. Flaming brands, held aloft by smiling page-boys, bathed people of every station — from the poorest to the most noble — just the same, making them equals for one night. Standing side by side, the knights and farriers, smiths and serving girls, dukes and priests, were all swept up in the spirit of the evening. As far as they were concerned, the only person counted higher than any other that night waited to be crowned Queen of May.

The sickly-sweet smell of roasting chestnuts drifted over to Alymere. He smiled at the gap-toothed girl standing beside him as she fumbled in her skirts for a coin to pay for the treat. He looked her up and down, seeing the ground-in grime and the threadbare cloth. "Allow me," he said, inclining his head slightly in the direction of the roasting tray. He flipped a coin over the smoking chestnuts. The roaster snatched it out of the air and shovelled a small handful of the nuts into a wooden bowl. He handed it Alymere, who in turn handed it to the gap-toothed girl with a smile. "Please, enjoy, my treat."

She curtseyed clumsily. "Thank you, Sir Knight."

"Just plain 'Alymere' for a few minutes yet, my lady."

He left her to chew on the hot nuts, mingling with the throng of revellers. All around him people were laughing and joking with each other. He saw maidens flirting outrageously with all manner of men, lifting their skirts and tossing back their heads; the moonlight made them all beautiful. No doubt, nine months down the line, more than a few houses would wake up to the shrieking and wailing of new life. After all, that was part of the whole ceremony, wasn't it, the wine, ale and song given in offering to the fertility of the land? He smiled at a young girl with bluebell eyes and skirts that trailed in the mud as she skipped by, followed by three boys who were obviously her brothers, and nodded to a broad-shouldered man about to try his hand against one of the knights in a roped-out wrestling ring. Quite a crowd had gathered to watch the bout. Alymere skirted around the edge of it, going to collect an ale to quench his thirst.

He was very much an outsider here. He did not belong. It wasn't so much the the years the dancers and revellers had grown up together, or that his face was ruined, or that his voice marked him as coming from the north, or even that he had been raised the son of a noble. It was something far deeper than that. Each one of these people was, in their own way, innocent. It had been a long time since Alymere had known that. He could smell it every bit as thickly in the air as the sweat and lust and chestnuts.

The air had grown thick with the milling people's musk; beneath that heavy scent he caught the stink of a woman's menses, of beeswax and of a festering wound that would soon turn gangrenous, of a splash of urine and — he sniffed, trying to isolate the smell — of wet fur. One of the animals had been playing in the river. There were so many other scents. They were unique, overwhelming. And yet he seemed to be the only one aware of them.

By the ale tent a troubadour had taken up residence, planting himself on an upturned log and resting his lute across his knee. Alymere listened to his jaunty little song for a moment. All he could think was that, in a few short minutes, everything would change. The singing would become screaming, the dancing would become panicked flight. They wouldn't know where to turn or who to trust, and then they would see him, Alymere, Killer of Kings, the Black Chalice in his hands, and they would know the true glory of what they had just witnessed, the coming of their new king.

He felt immensely powerful. Mighty. He closed his fist and knew that he had the strength within it to crush Arthur's face — his mouth, his nose, his windpipe — to beat the life out of him, if he chose.

A ragged cheer went up.

Alymere turned to see the girl who would become the May Queen emerge through the gates of Camelot. She was accompanied by three young girls, who barely came up to the belt of flowers she wore around her waist. She wore a garland of daisies twined through the curls of her long black hair, and a simple white fine linen dress that hugged the curves of her body. All four of them carried sprigs of hawthorn. She wasn't a girl, he realised, aware that he was staring; she was without doubt the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. There was something uncannily familiar about her, although he knew he couldn't have seen her before.

His breath quickened, and his head swum with voices of his past, voices of people who had meant something to him: his mother, Lowick, Roth, Baptiste. He heard Bors' booming voice, and the blind monk from Medcaut begging for his life. He heard other voices, less familiar, voices that in many cases he had forgotten he had ever heard. Alymere's soul glimmered briefly, and the Devil stamped it down, hard, asserting himself once more upon the borrowed flesh.

He watched the soon-to-be Queen walk toward the Maypole. Her smile lit up the night.

Had her voice been one of the clamour? How could that be possible? He looked at her again, and as he did so he idly touched the favour tied around his left bicep. His eyes drifted down to the hem of the woman's white dress.

It was torn, a strip of cloth missing.

She walked toward the king, curtseying as she reached him. The revellers formed a circle as they gathered around the Maypole, hushed, expectation bright in their eyes.

Alymere pushed his way toward the front of the circle, his thirst momentarily forgotten. He felt his skin crawl as he brushed up against a fishwife, every fibre raw enough that the slightest touch made him want to cry out. He gritted his teeth against the pain and pushed between a tallow girl — the wax still thick on her skirts — and a butcher's boy who had been making eyes at her. A horde seemed to stand between him and the coronation.

He was minutes away from the kingship. He had thought it through meticulously, utilising Alymere's skills of reasoning; thinking through each possibility and outcome as though preparing a strategy for an upcoming battle. The Devil savoured the irony that, in effect, Arthur had forced this flesh, this mind, to learn the skills that would prove to be the king's ultimate undoing. It was delicious. Had he not meddled — had he simply granted Alymere his wish, freeing him from his ties to Lowick and his northern estates and instead offered him a place in Camelot — none of this could have happened. In trying to prove how fair and just a ruler he was, Arthur had condemned himself. He was a living, breathing dead man, and like all of the damned his breath was about to run out.

Alymere had contemplated poisoning the well — the idea had come to him when Katherine had refused to look at him. He had watched the pail rise slowly, sloshing water over its brim, and realised that by emptying a single cupful of water from the Black Chalice into the drinking water he could have killed every man, woman and child in Camelot. For the devil told Alymere that water from the cup was lethal to those who had not drained it of his hellish blood. The only thing that stayed his hand was how indiscriminate it was. Arthur himself might live while all those around him died, if he wasn't thirsty. And even should Arthur have been the first to fall, the water would have been fouled for years, the poison seeping down into the underground lake that fed the well and killing all who drunk from it, so who then would have remained for him to rule over? A king needed his subjects, his knights and his servants, otherwise he was just a fool living in an empty castle.

No, it needed to be much more exact than that — and public. That was paramount. He wanted the world to see Arthur fall, and him rise to take his place. They would toast his rise to the Round Table, each taking a sip from the tainted cup. By drinking his own blood from the cup he had let the Devil in. It was a part of him now. He was immune. Arthur was not. One sip from the Chalice was all it would take.

He could see it now, the mighty Excalibur touching his shoulder, Arthur shouting "Arise, Sir Alymere!" Taking a swig from the Chalice together, before everyone, to toast his triumph. It was glorious in its simplicity, like all the best lies.

He breathed in deeply, savouring all of the stinks that he inhaled.

This was it. His time was now.

Alymere walked into the back of a callow-faced boy, who was gazing straight ahead. The lad grunted and Alymere leaned in close. "Do me a service, lad, and you'll earn a good coin or two. Understand?" The boy nodded. Alymere pushed back his cloak and untied the small cloth pouch holding the Chalice from his belt.

He felt his heartbeat race and his mouth dry. He clenched his fist.

He struggled to keep his breathing steady. Parting with it, even for a few moments, and even with his triumph so close at hand, was difficult. More difficult than he had anticipated. But needs must as the Devil drives…

"Bring this to me when I call for it. Do not open it. Do not touch it. Your life depends upon it, boy. Do you understand me?"

The woman behind him looked aghast when she saw his scarred face and heard the threat, before recognising him as the man about to be knighted, and therefore beyond reproach. She struggled to smile at him. The boy didn't seem to care; he reached out for the pouch, delighted with the chance to earn a few coins. Alymere pushed a copper penny into his palm. "Do as I've asked and there are five more where this one came from."

The boy's face lit up. He nodded eagerly, shuffling his feet in the dirt. He clutched at the cloth pouch as though it were the most precious thing in the whole world — which, of course, it was.

Alymere said, "Come with me," and worked his way to the front of the crowd. He made sure the boy was beside him. It was going to be a night both of them would remember for the rest of their lives.

He was mighty. He was Alymere, and in just a few moments he would kill King Arthur.

Arthur held a crown in his hands. This was the May Crown. It wasn't made of gold or precious metals and stones, but of flowers woven around briar twigs, hundreds of tiny perfect blossoms crammed tightly together. Each petal was a thing of beauty, like the girl about to wear it. But Alymere only had eyes for the torn hem of her dress.

The girl curtseyed, spreading her skirt and stooping so low she nearly knelt at his feet, and lowered her head, dark curls trailing on the grass. The king smiled down at her, then lifted his gaze and addressed the onlookers. "Friends, we are here this night to join in two-fold celebration. First, to revel in the richness of the land and the renewal of spring as the cycle of life begins once more; and second, to welcome a brave knight, a true man, as he swears the Oath of chivalry and takes his seat at the Round Table." A cheer went up at this. Alymere inclined his head slightly, acknowledging the adulation of the crowd. "Make that three-fold, my friends, for then we shall revel in good company, drink and make merry 'til the sun comes up!" Arthur proclaimed, and the cheers that greeted his words were twice as loud.

"But first we need a Queen!" Alymere watched as the king's smile widened and his gaze drifted toward his own beloved queen, Guinevere. She was beautiful, of that there was no doubt, but beside the soon-to-be-crowned Queen of May she was at best merely pretty, at worst plain.

The king leaned forward, placing the briarwood crown on the girl's head, and moving a stray curl away from her brow.

"The Queen is crowned!" someone in the crowd shouted. The boy beside him took up the cry, "Long live the Queen!" and others joined in. Again and again it rang out around him, voices raised in jubilation. Alymere studied the woman's face as she looked up, and found that he could not look away from her eyes. Instinctively his fingers drifted toward the favour tied around his arm. Something passed between them; a connection. Not between himself and the woman, but between her and the man he had been.

He flinched, pulling his hand away from the favour as though burned.

The May Queen drew herself up to her full height and turned to face the cheering crowd, and the three younger girls ran forward with baskets of petals for her to cast on the wind. Her smile could have melted the stoniest heart as she moved barefoot through the crowd, bestowing her smile, and the softest brush of her lips on cheeks and foreheads, on her worshippers, who loved her all the more. Dirt and grass stains smeared the soles of her feet. She was skipping, a trail of petals strewn across the moonlit grass in her wake, by the time she took the ribbon from the outstretched hand of a grinning lad, and running by the time she finished circling the Maypole. It was all part of a well-rehearsed ritual that ended in the one great truth of life: what comes from the earth needs must return to the earth.

The May Queen stood with her back against the pole, breasts heaving, curls of hair matted flat to her scalp, and looked around until her eyes found Alymere in the crowd.

She blew him a kiss, much to the delight of the women in the audience.

Her smile widened. And in that moment her eyes, her smile, together, were the most beautiful he had seen. He felt his body stir, aroused by her scrutiny.

He was burning. He reached up instinctively to touch his ruined cheek.

She waved a signal to the other dancers, who each held a trailing ribbon in their hands, to start the dance, around and around the Maypole, until the ribbons had bound the May Queen completely to the pole at her back. And still they twisted and twined the ribbons around her until they smothered her completely, and not a trace of her white dress or porcelain skin was exposed.

Alymere stared at her, watching the shallow rise and fall of her breast beneath the shroud of ribbons, and thought of her fighting for breath, suffocating under there. Of course, the ribbons were not wound so tight that she couldn't breathe. And soon the men would rush from the crowd and cut her free, but it would be 'too late,' and they'd bear her down to the river where they'd lay her down on a raft on a bed of spring flowers, and sail her down the river. But not yet. Her release would come at the end of the feast.

First, Alymere had to kneel and swear the Oath to Arthur, and then the king must die.

He broke the circle and walked toward the king.