He could not say what instinct caused him to open the Devil's Bible the next morning — having left it untouched for days — but even as he opened his eyes to the morning he found himself reaching for it.
It felt so familiar to his touch; cold and marble-smooth, like the skin of a dead man.
As Alymere turned the first page and saw those familiar words — being an account of the entire wisdom of Man as transcribed by Harmon Reclusus — he knew that more secrets of the book were going to reveal themselves to him.
He looked at the words, at the shape of them as they bled across the page, and found his still sleep-addled mind imagining them running together. The letters moved, twisting and sliding into and away from one another, forming new nonsense words and old familiar ones, although never settling for more than a heartbeat in any shape that allowed him to read them. As he rested his fingertips flat on the page he saw the ink stain them, the words climbing from the page to stain his skin. They curled around his fingers, sharing secrets with his flesh that he could not know, rising up the soft smooth expanse of the meat of his forearm, each line becoming a vein and artery, feeding the life of him as completely as might blood. He rubbed at his eyes, knowing it was impossible for words to rewrite themselves once writ and that they could not move of their own accord, nor tattoo his body, and in the back of his mind heard the soft sibilant whisper of the word Chalice again, though this time he was awake and in full charge of his faculties. There could be no pretending the voice was the work of ghosts.
The spell broken, the words fell back onto the page — although in truth they had never left it — and Alymere pushed himself up in bed. He leaned on an elbow, and called, "Who is there?"
No-one answered, not that he expected them to.
"Father?" he asked, not daring to believe it possible and feeling stupid for thinking it. "Is that you?"
Again there was no answer.
When he looked down at the book this time there were more words that he recognised — incomplete phrases that alone made no sense, though in the centre of the poem, above the words Black Chalice he could now read seven more words: The White Crow and the Devil's Tree.
He recalled the white-streaked feathers of the crow that watched him preside over the Assizes, the last of its kin to take flight. Before he could check to see if any more of the words within the book had made themselves known, a floorboard creaked outside his room.
Someone was out there. There could be no mistaking it this time.
He closed the book, and as the pages came together again the word chalice slipped into the back of his mind, repeating itself, chalicechalicechalice, in a woman's voice this time. No, he realised — not a woman's, a boy's.
That he had imagined the word spoken by three different voices ought to have steered his mind toward the truth, or at least some revelation of his own madness. Instead, ignoring the implications, he called out, almost shouting, "What trickery is this?"
Again, the deliberate sigh of a floorboard beneath someone's foot, and then silence.
"Who goes there?"
This time, his question was answered by a soft knock on the chamber door.
The iron handle twisted and the door opened a crack, and he could see a sliver of shadow sneak into the room.
He sprung from the bed, casting about for something to defend himself with.
As the door opened wider he saw that it was the woman, Gwen. She wore a simple white shift, her face like ash as she stepped into the room.
The tension ebbed from his body, leaving him standing naked in the middle of the floor. He laughed at his own unease, and pulled the blanket from the bed to cover his nakedness.
"What is it?" Alymere asked, and realising that she could not answer him, abandoned any pretence of modesty and grasped her with both hands, forcing her to meet his gaze. "What is wrong?"
"It is your uncle."
Alymere felt a dread chill blossom in his heart. "He is here?"
The woman nodded. "They brought him in on a stretcher. He is grievously wounded, my lord. They fear he may not make it through the night."
"What happened to him?"
"I do not know, and did not think it my place to ask."
"No. Of course. Thank you, Gwen."
Alymere grabbed his shirt, discarded the night before with the rest of his clothes in a heap, and buttoned it with trembling hands. Three times he missed the eyelet and the button slipped through his fingers. He pulled on his hose and tied the leather thong tight, before running barefoot out of the room, his feet slapping on the hardwood floor.
The entire house was in a commotion. He could hear people calling out, barking orders. There was none of the laughter he had come to associate with his home.
He stopped dead on the landing, clutching the balustrade, caught between looking down the great staircase to the reception room where servants and soldiers gathered, and what had been the door to his parent's chamber along the landing. The white hart painted onto the heavy oak had faded, but it was still visible in the morning gloom.
They would have taken Sir Lowick to his room so that he might die in his own bed, he knew, though the bitter little voice at the back of his head insisted on reminding Alymere, it wasn't his uncle's bed at all, and that already one of two brothers had died in it.
He forced himself to walk down the passageway to the door, and knocked once, his knuckles striking the belly of the white hart.
Pushing open the door without waiting to be summoned, and seeing the dying man sprawled out upon the sheets, his skin already the texture and tone of the dead, Alymere could not help but see the grotesque symmetry in the fates of the brothers Lowick and Roth.
He was not alone in the room. A giant of a man knelt at his bedside, head bowed in prayer. He did not look up until he had offered his final words to the Lord, beseeching the Almighty to make his friend's final journey a peaceful one.
Alymere could not see his face, but he did not need to. The voice was unmistakable, as were the wild black curls that spilled over his clasped hands, and the sheer bulk of the man. It could only have been Sir Bors de Ganis at the bedside.
When finally the big knight raised his head, all mirth and wildness had gone from his eyes. He appeared tortured; haunted by the things he had seen and by the things he had done since last they met.
"Tis a good thing you were not a pretty boy to start with, lad," he said, pushing himself to his feet. "For the fire has done you no favours. Still, no doubt some doxy will want to kiss it all better."
Alymere felt like he was a child again, tiptoeing into his parents room to sit beside his dying father. There were too many dark memories in this room. Stripped down like this, the two of them — the memory and the man — looked so similar it rocked him to the very foundation of his being. He recalled the vow he had made when his uncle first claimed the manor house — that he would never set foot in this room again — and yet here he was, fate making a liar out of him as he watched another man slowly die.
Alymere made a new vow then: no one else would die in this room. He would have it walled up when he became the man of house.
He looked at Bors, seeing for the first time the tears streaking the knight's face, and every certainty he had ever had failed him. He threw himself into Bors' arms, and for a moment they hugged fiercely, bonded by grief. "What happened?" Alymere asked, extricating himself from the big man's grip. "I see no dressings, no wounds. Is it sickness?"
"No, lad. Poison. Tis a dark day when a faithless whoreson can bring down a good man thus." He shook his head.
"Poison?" Alymere's mind raced.
"Aye. The poor bastard's dying from the inside out, lad. His body has been failing him ever since he swallowed that damned water from the chalice." That word again. Alymere felt his blood run cold as it coiled like a serpent through his brain: chalicechalicechalicechalicechalice…
"Every hour another part of him loses its grip on life. Never thought he'd last this long, but the old man's always been one stubborn cur, so why should that change just because he's dying?"
Alymere had no answer for that.
"All he would say was that he wanted to die here, that he wanted to be buried beside his brother. The poison ate away at him 'til he couldn't stand on his own two feet, 'til his eyes lost their focus and his body turned gaunt because he couldn't keep a damned thing down. It's only ever been a matter of time, as much as we wanted to deny it. No medicine touched his fever, no herbs quieted the pain in his head or settled his stomach. In truth it would have been a mercy had he died days ago, lad, but he's hung on stubbornly, wanting to come home. No doubt to finally make his peace with you."
"We made our peace a long time ago, Bors. There are no secrets between us."
"Then perhaps he just wanted to see you one last time."
"I don't understand how this could happen," Alymere said. "I thought he came to Camelot to urge Arthur to dispatch knights north to help secure the border? Was he poisoned there?"
"No lad. We rode out weeks ago. It's been a bitter spring, make no bones about it. Those faithless northerners are hard: they paint themselves up and fight like demons, they'd sacrifice their own grandmothers if they thought it'd give them the upper hand, and no matter how hard you beat them, they just don't know when they should lie down. Bitter weather and treacherous conditions only added to the hell of it. I've lost too many friends these last weeks, but in many ways this is the worst of it. It's one thing for a man to die with his sword in his hand, fighting for what he believes in, it's another for him to toast supposed peace with his killers and drink in their bloody poison."
Alymere began to put together a vague picture of events. The how: poison; the where: at a parlay brokering peace between the northmen and the knights; the who: well, the victim was laid out of the bed before him, and the killer, as far as he knew, was still out there fighting; the when: more than a few days ago, less than a week, meaning right around the time he was pronouncing his ill-fated judgement on Craven's suit; but the why of it, that he could not divine from either his uncle's body or Sir Bors' brief description of what had transpired.
He was not even sure it mattered.
"Come here, boy," Sir Lowick's voice was empty of strength, like wood charcoaled in a spent fire. It was so quiet it barely registered as a sound at all. Alymere could scarcely believe it had come from his uncle's mouth.
Lowick had raised a hand. His eyes were open, but his stare was glassy.
"Go to him," Bors said, steering Alymere gently toward the bedside and backing away. Alymere knelt and took his uncle's hand. It felt like the fragile body of a bird nestled between his fingers; so thin, and the skin so slack around it, that Alymere feared simply squeezing too tightly would shatter his uncle's hand.
He brought it to his lips and kissed it, then lowered his head, pressing the delicate bones against the scarred tissue of his forehead. He didn't move until he felt the warm wet track of tears on his cheek. Alymere breathed in deeply, willing himself to be strong.
"I will leave you alone," Bors said softly, and closed the heavy door behind him.
"I can't see you, boy."
"I am here, uncle," Alymere said, soothing him. "You should rest. I will be here when you wake."
"No, I'll rest soon enough." Lowick's eyes roved wildly, unable to focus on anything. The veins at his throat fluttered weakly. "First, I need to make my peace with my maker. There are things I need to unburden from my soul before I meet Him. And then, God willing, I need to make my peace with you. I owe you that much. After that, I can go." His grip tightened feebly, and a hacking cough wracked his body, leaving blood flecks on his lips. He lacked the strength to wipe them away, so Alymere tended to him, cleaning away the blood with the cuff of his shirt. "I need you to do something for me, boy," the knight said at last. "I need you to bring the priest here. Will you do that for me? Can I count on you?"
"Of course, uncle," Alymere said at once, immediately hating himself for the sense of relief the request sent flooding through his system. It wasn't until he reached the door, his hand on the iron handle, that he felt anything other than relief that he would be spared the bedside vigil for however many hours more.
"Twice in these last months I have watched over you, thinking you not long for this world, and here it's me that leaves it first. That, at least, is how it should be."
He turned to look back at his uncle, and in that moment was overcome by almost childish resentment that this man he had come to love was leaving him, and rather than spend the last few hours he had in this life with his nephew, Lowick had sent him away.
Why should he want to make his peace with some unknowable God before he made peace with his own flesh and blood?
He wanted desperately not to think ill of the dying man, but it hurt.
Alymere made the sign of the cross over his chest.
"You were always a good boy, Alymere. I am proud of you," Sir Lowick said, but Alymere had already closed the door.
Bors leaned against the balustrade, face grave. He looked as though he needed to hit something. Alymere could identify with the feeling. "What did he say?"
"Nothing," Alymere said, biting down the bitterness in his voice. He couldn't help himself. "Save that he wanted me to fetch him a priest so that he might confess his sins, I suppose. So much for hanging on to see me one last time; he was only worried about his soul."
"Do not be too harsh on him, lad. Dying is never easy, no matter how laboured its step as it creeps towards us. It is understandable that he would seek to put his house in order."
"Then why leave me to last?"
"Whatever needs be said, I have absolute faith will be said. Lowick is one man who will not go to his rest until he is good and ready, and on his own terms, that much I know," but it wasn't what Alymere wanted or needed to hear.
Alymere pushed away from the big man and half-walked, half-ran back to his room, his bare feet slapping too loudly in the silence. Bors let him go.
Gwen had gone. He was glad of that. He didn't think he could have taken her sympathy, no matter how well intended it was.
He wasn't dressed for a long ride. He couldn't think straight. He cast about the room, looking at the sum of his life, pitiful as it was, before gathering his travelling cloak, boots, and a woollen over-shirt, and dressing properly. Then, at the last moment, Alymere stopped beside the bed and stooped, reaching under the wooden frame until he found the familiar skin binding of the Devil's Bible beneath his fingers.
He stuffed it inside his shirt, keeping it close to his chest, and left the room.
Sir Bors de Ganis stood at the head of the stairs like a giant guarding the threshold. "Take Marchante, lad. There isn't a faster horse in your uncle's stable, and no matter my confidence he will live long enough, why make it harder on him?"
"Thank you," Alymere said, clasping his hand. "Truly. Your kindness… You have always been so kind and I always sound like a spoilt child. Who would have thought this day even possible when we first met, eh? I was so filled with childish anger and blamed him for everything, for my father's death, my mother's, our exile, and it was only ever fed by Baptiste. It took two years and the wisdom of a king who didn't know me from Adam to show me he was a good man, and now, now that I know it… he's being taken from me. It just… brings back memories and I'm feeling sorry for myself…"
"Understandable, lad. Don't ever apologise for your feelings. They are what will make you a great knight one day. You are so very like your father in that regard. Now go, ride like the flaming wind. I will watch over Lowick 'til you return."