The Mongoliad: Book Three

CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

In the wake of the Cardinal’s departure from the Emperor’s tent, Frederick waved his hands and his guards withdrew. In a few moments, only he and Ocyrhoe remained, and he gestured for her to join him at the narrow table where several plates of food were arrayed. She hesitated, awkwardly aware of the ragged condition of her clothing and the matted tangles of her hair. The Emperor’s clothing was made of silk, and she could only imagine what it was like to wear such opulent clothing. She felt like the city rat she was, transported into an unknown wilderness, a forest so dense with trees and brush she could barely see the sky. So unlike Rome. So unlike anything she had ever known.

The Emperor sat on one of the stools beside the table and began to eat: salted pork, grapes, slivers of sliced fruit, hunks of dark bread. Her mouth watered as she drifted toward the table. “Sit,” Frederick said. “Eat.” He poured water from a jug into a plain cup. Into another cup he poured a measure of wine. “Earlier today I had a meal similar to this one with your friends,” he said, ignoring her reluctance to join him. He indicated the cups on the table with a piece of meat. “We drank from some of my finer tableware, which would normally be completely unremarkable but for an odd bit of roguish sleight of hand.” He stared at her intently as if she should know what he was talking about.

She shook her head.

“The priest truly does think he is in possession of the Holy Grail,” Frederick said without further preamble. “What do you think of such nonsense?”

“I know very little of such things, Your Majesty,” Ocyrhoe said, her hand darting out for a grape.

Frederick grunted and stared off into space for a few moments. “He is a curious fellow, your priest. One moment, he seems quite harmless; the next, sadly broken from his experience at Mohi; and the next…” He shook his head slightly. “I have met my share of zealots, little Binder, and most of them cannot hide their insanity. They are like moths that have been blinded by a candle. Father Rodrigo, on the other hand, concerns me. If he were a moth, he would be blind, burned, and still insistent on leaping into the flame again.” He picked up his cup and sipped from it. “And he doesn’t want to go alone.”

Ocyrhoe didn’t know what to say. The Emperor’s assessment of Father Rodrigo made her stomach knot. She reached for the cup of water and drank from it slowly.

“We were having a perfectly pleasant conversation this morning,” Frederick continued, “albeit one that was marred by the occasional outlandish remark concerning apocalyptic prophecies and divine inspiration, and then the priest produced a cup from his satchel and announced it was the Holy Grail.” Frederick smiled. “I laughed at him, I must admit, which was probably not the most circumspect reaction, but I was taken aback by his claim. He was, after all, trying to convince me that one of my own cups was the holy chalice.” He tapped a fingernail against the rim of his cup. “Just like this one. I offered him wine, and when my back was turned, he slipped the cup into his satchel so that he could produce it again.” He shook his head. “I knew it was my own cup. I had had a boy bring three into the tent. I had one, there was a second sitting on this table, and the third-well, the third was in Father Rodrigo’s hand and he was telling me that it was the Holy Grail and, with it, he was going to call a crusade against the infidels and nonbelievers. And by God, I believed him.”

Ocyrhoe nodded slowly. “I saw him preaching to a crowd at the marketplace,” she said. “They weren’t shouting at him or throwing vegetables. They were listening, and he had a cup there too. I could feel the mood of the crowd change when he showed it to them. They became more…” She searched for the right word.

“Entranced?” Frederick provided.

“Yes, entranced. They would have followed him if the Vatican’s guards hadn’t intervened.” She wrinkled her nose. “But, I saw the cup fall,” she said. “He dropped it, and I don’t remember where it rolled. I don’t know that anyone retrieved it.” She looked at Frederick’s cup. “And it was gold. Not silver.”

“Yes,” said Frederick absently. “And the one he produced this morning was silver at first, but it appeared to change color…”

Taking advantage of Frederick’s inattention, Ocyrhoe snatched a piece of the meat from the trencher and shoved it into her mouth. She was not used to pork-the unpleasant smell of it hung over the whole camp-and her mouth cringed from the heavy salting, but she chewed it nonetheless. She groped for her cup, gulping water to help wash down the dry meat. None of this stopped her from reaching for another piece.

Frederick watched her eat, the corner of his mouth turning up in mild amusement. “We used to be friends,” he said, “Cardinal Fieschi and I. I used to have a much less… antagonistic relationship with Rome. I went on a crusade for the Church, in fact. It was the only crusade since our initial conquest of Jerusalem that could be considered a victory for the Church, and I did it with very little bloodshed. Does the Pope reward me for such a victory? No. He excommunicates me. Twice.” He shook his head. “And now this disaster in Rome: the sede vacante, this strange Pope who may not be Pope, the disappearance of the Binders in Rome-oh, yes, I know about your missing kin-sisters-and, finally, the question of the Cup of Christ. What am I to make of this… oddity that Father Rodrigo placed on my table? That entranced members of my camp?”

He drummed his fingers on the table, idly chewing on his lip as he thought. Ocyrhoe kept eating, emboldened now by the Emperor’s mental distance.

“I fear Fieschi will be Pope someday, and at which time I will lose the friendship of a Cardinal and gain the enmity of a Pope,” Frederick said with a sigh. “Though I admit to some culpability in straining that friendship. I do admire Cardinal Fieschi’s self-control in not forcing himself upon the Church at this time, though I guess I can’t blame him. This election was a fucking disaster from the beginning.”

Ocyrhoe choked on her piece of meat, and it was only after gulping the rest of her water that she was able to breath easily again. “What do you know about my sisters?” she finally managed.

Frederick nodded. “I’m sure Senator Orsini was simply following orders, blindly being led by a hand that he thinks will continue to feed him, but he is, in the end, very provincial in his thinking. Which would be more ironic-given his status in Rome, that once great center of civilization-were it not for the larger game afoot.” He leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table. “What did Lena tell you when she sent you back to me?”

“She… she didn’t,” Ocyrhoe stuttered. “The Cardinal ordered me to come along.”

“He did, did he?” Frederick smiled. “And she said nothing to you before you left?”

Ocyrhoe tried to remember anything that Lena might have imparted to her that would be worthy of the Emperor’s notice, and she couldn’t recall anything specific. “She said I needed to leave the city, and when I said that I couldn’t because of the guards, she told me to be patient. Something would happen that would aid me.”

“And it did, in the person of the Cardinal. Not what you expected, was it?”

“Very little has been since… since my sisters vanished, Your Majesty.”

“Yes, well, I expect it will get stranger still yet,” Frederick said wryly. “Do you believe that the cup Father Rodrigo carries is actually the Grail?”

He seemed very focused on that question, and Ocyrhoe wished she knew what she was supposed to say. “I do not know, Your Majesty.”

“I suspect Fieschi was going to try to bind you to retrieving it for him,” Frederick said. “Though I am not quite certain why he thought that might be possible.”

“I don’t understand. Bind me how?”

“To a message. In the same way that you were bound by Cardinal Somercotes to bring me news of the Cardinals’ captivity.”

Ocyrhoe did not understand what he meant and she was uncertain if she could confess that or simply play along. She wished this situation were a dream from which she might will herself awake. Her very sinews felt as if they were about to leap out of her body and run back to Rome, leaving her a pile of enervated bones on the rug-covered ground of the pavilion.

Frederick, sensing her tension, laughed and slapped his leg. The joyous expression was strange on his unhandsome face, but she believed his jocularity was freely expressed. “Let us not talk of being forced into a course of action,” he said dryly. “Let us consider a choice freely made. Hmmm?” When she nodded, he continued. “Let us presume for a moment that you knew where Father Rodrigo and Ferenc had gone and that you were allowed to join them. Knowing what you know about the priest and his mission-which, I grant, is very little-would you be inclined to join him or stop him?

“How… how would I stop him?” she asked.

“You saw him in the marketplace. Do you think the guards would have been able to remove him from the crowd if he hadn’t dropped the cup?”

“It frightens you,” she said, sensing the truth of her words as they came out of her mouth.

Frederick sat back on his stool, his face becoming still and unreadable. “I am concerned, little one,” he said somewhat brusquely. “Do not conflate such into more than it is.”

“You want me to steal the Grail,” she said, the Emperor’s intentions as clear as if he had spoken them aloud.

“So does Cardinal Fieschi,” he said. His expression was complicated to read now: at once trying to remain friendly and confiding, but a sternness had settled on his brow. “Which of us would you obey?”

Ocyrhoe looked down, cowed but determined to maintain her position. “Why must I obey either of you?” she asked. “The Senator took my sisters and the Cardinal did little to stop him. You profess to knowing of their disappearance too, and what have you done to aid them? And yet you ask me to thieve for you? For the Church?” She shook her head.

Frederick remained still, studying her, and she focused on her hands to avoid his scrutiny.

“If I were to tell you-to insist, as a matter of fact-that the cup that Father Rodrigo has taken is, indeed, nothing more than a cup from my table, would that not make his action thievery? If you were to believe the Cardinal’s clumsy rhetoric, whatever Father Rodrigo is carrying is Church property, property that has been stolen as well. You would be returning something that does not belong to the priest. Doing so would be the right thing to do, in fact, and I don’t think it is such an onerous thing for me to ask of you.”

Ocyrhoe immediately looked up and stared at him, with the frank rudeness that usually only small children can get away with.

“No? Then why don’t you do it yourself?” she asked, and when he didn’t answer immediately, she continued. “If retrieving this cup is such a simple duty, then why do both the Holy Roman Emperor and one of the most powerful Cardinals in Rome want me to do it? Do you think I am too simple to notice the contradiction? Do you think because I am female, or common, or young, that I don’t recognize hypocrisy and manipulation when I see it?” Amazed at her own brazenness, she quickly amended, “Your Majesty.” But she kept his gaze.

Frederick was the one who looked away, blinking rapidly. “Christ Almighty,” he said to himself. “No wonder she arranged this.” He looked back at her, and grinned. “I apologize, young lady. Very well. I intended no offense, and I will prove it now by including you in my thoughts about these matters. Tell me, what do you think of this nonsense with the cup?”

Ocyrhoe’s thin lips pressed together briefly to control a flaring of anger. “You are mocking me, Your Majesty,” she stated.

He shook his head. “I’m not. Truly. I think the world of Lena”-he chuckled and shook his head-“and I would never mock one of her kin-sisters. Alas, I have been boorish enough to insult one, though, by implying she is simple, so please grant me the opportunity to make amends.”

Ocyrhoe took a deep breath and let it out in a sigh, willing her fearful indignation to subside enough so she might think straight. He really wanted to know her opinion and it was abundantly clear to her now that he wasn’t going to stop asking until she replied. “In the marketplace, I saw the priest hold up a cup as if it were a relic. But I was not very close to him, and from what I did see, it seemed to be shiny but it was otherwise unremarkable.” She tried to recall more details of the event in the marketplace: the way the crowd reacted to Father Rodrigo, the play of light on the object in his hand, the odd hollowness of his voice, the crawling sensation she felt in the back of her head. “But it did affect those who looked on it. The crowd thrilled at the sight of it,” she said slowly, swallowing a strange thickness at the back of her throat.

“But you found it unremarkable?” Frederick asked.

Ocyrhoe shook her head. “It had no power over me, if that is what you mean.”

“Yes, that’s what I meant,” Frederick said. “While I was not as smitten by it as some in my camp, I must confess to being lulled by its presence. I knew it was a cup from my table, but such awareness did not make itself felt upon my mind until well after the priest had removed it from my sight. So, the question that continues to intrigue me is this: does the influence derive from the man or the cup?” He levered a finger at her. “What do you think of the man Rodrigo?” he asked.

She grimaced, caught off guard by his brusque question. She squirmed under his gaze, not wanting to give him an answer, but knowing she couldn’t avoid doing so. “He is a good man,” she said carefully. “I think he has suffered a terrible injury. Not physically, but in his mind. I do not think he is a mystic or a prophet or anything like that. Something has not healed right in his head.”

Frederick nodded. “How does this attraction work? If it stems not from the cup nor from his person, then how can you account for his power over the people?”

Ocyrhoe shrugged. “How different is it from the influence any powerful ruler has over his subjects? Does it worry you because you feel it too? That you might be like the rest of us?” She was somewhat shocked by these words. She would not have spoken so bluntly to her own foster mother, and yet, here she was, speaking thusly to the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire.

He gave her an avuncular laugh. “You have an unexpected feistiness I rather like.” He sobered. “However, as much as I know you would find delight in me admitting that I am, like yourself, nothing more than a rat from the streets, albeit in finer clothing, put aside this ferocity. It’s getting in the way of our discourse. Where does this power come from?”

She did not entirely trust his motives but, in the back of her mind-in much the same way she sensed the presence of Lena or her sisters-she knew her answers were providing a way. To what and how she had no idea, but she only knew her path was not yet set. “My only thoughts are… far-fetched, Your Majesty,” she said.

“To hell with orthodoxy. Tell me what you think.”

Using her two hands to illustrate her point, Ocyrhoe said, “The man is nothing alone, and the cup is nothing alone, but when the man works with the cup”-here she brought her hands-palms up-together, interweaving her fingers-“it is as if there is a…” She searched for the right word, and found one, floating there in her head as if it were waiting for her to latch onto it. As if whispered from someone else’s lips directly into her ear. “An alchemical change. They become more than the sum of their parts.”

Frederick sat back in his chair, his expression both piqued and hooded. “An interesting word choice, my young friend. Not the sort of explanation I would expect from a poorly dressed street rat.” His lips quirked around a smile. “Take no offense, please,” he said, anticipating her reaction. “Given the overbearing reach of the Church within Rome’s walls, it is surprising to find someone who knows of the concepts of al-kimia.”

He pronounced the word differently than she had, and instinctively she knew he was referencing an older tradition, much like the cloth merchants in the market would assess the quality of each other’s wares with cryptic references to the source of the materials. There was a light dancing in his eyes now, a flame of mirth that he was trying very hard to tamp down.

“It would seem remarkable how similarly our minds work, wouldn’t it?” he asked. “But I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.” Clapping his hands together between his knees, he leaned forward. “Answer me this, then: why is not everyone affected by it? That is the part I cannot make sense of.”

“I think it has to do with any given person’s nature,” Ocyrhoe said. She suddenly felt shy. Answering the catechism of his first few questions had been awkward, but not entirely uncomfortable; now, something had changed in his demeanor, and his questions had a new intensity. He actually wanted to know her opinion, and she found the onus of providing useful information intimidating. “Perhaps in these days of such upheaval, when there is no Pope, when there are terrifying stories of invaders from the east, there are some people who wish to have an apparent savior appear, and so given the chance to believe they have seen one, they will believe.” She raised her shoulders. “Others do not.”

“I agree with that, but I cannot imagine anyone alive right now not wishing for some kind of savior to appear,” Frederick argued. “I wish it myself, and I’m the most dedicated atheist alive.”

“It… it isn’t about faith,” Ocyrhoe offered. “Consider this: Ferenc is absolutely devoted to Father Rodrigo; he loves him dearly, and he would believe anything the priest told him. But was Ferenc entranced by the cup? Even when Father Rodrigo brandished it?”

Frederick shook his head.

“Maybe, to him, it is just a cup. Maybe, it hasn’t occurred to him that such an object would be anything other than what it appears to be,” Ocyrhoe offered.

Frederick grimaced thoughtfully, looking at her, nodding slowly. “That is it,” he said conclusively. “Thank you. Such pure and clear understanding.” He sighed, and looked away from her for a long moment, staring out into the avenue where the life of the tent city continued to stream past. “Such maddening cleverness,” he said quietly, speaking not of Ocyrhoe but of someone else who was not present.

But who had been. Recently, Ocyrhoe suspected.

Eventually he turned back to look at her. “Given all this, then, would you take the cup away from the priest?”

Ocyrhoe frowned. “I already told you I will not steal it, not for the Church and not for the Crown. I don’t see how this conversation changes that.”

He held up a finger to his lip. “Soft, girl. Listen to me. I am not ordering you as a ruler. I am suggesting that you do this as a favor to the boy and to the priest himself. No good will come of that poor madman wandering through the wilderness, occasionally turning heads. He will inspire enough people that they may be moved to take action and raise arms against the Mongols. But-”

She raised her hand to protest, but he reached across the table and grabbed her by the wrist, pulling her toward him. His pale blue eyes flared almost green.

“But,” he repeated in a low, intense voice, “and this is the most important but that you are going to hear in your young life, so listen to me. But he will not raise enough of a force to be effective against the invaders. If the Grail were truly some kind of holy relic, and the entire population of Europe really was moved to rise up against the Mongols, that would be one thing. But the fucking thing does not have that power. It is an illusion. The number who will be moved will be just large enough to convince themselves they are strong, but they’ll be wrong, and they’ll be slaughtered, and their families will be bereft. That is what will happen if Rodrigo keeps hold of that goddamned cup. The man and the cup must be sundered. It is the kindest thing that you can do for him. And for scores or maybe hundreds of families whose paths he is about to cross. Take the cup away from him.”

He stared into her eyes, and she saw sweat forming on his brow. He was barely controlling his breath. She realized, with shamed amazement, that he was speaking not as a conniver or controller, but as a ruler concerned about the well-being of those he ruled. A ruler who feared he, himself, was not strong enough to perform this task.

“Yes,” she said, suddenly frightened. “I will.”