King Javan’s Year (30 page)

“Sire, I've never, ever betrayed the seal, and I never would.” He swallowed again. “A good priest is supposed to die rather than reveal information received under the seal. Is that—what you want me to do?”

“Let's not worry about that for now,” Javan murmured, setting his hand on the priest's shoulder and easing them both back out onto the path, to head toward the approaching Guiscard. “For the present, let's assume that I'll give you permission to reveal what I've confessed, if that's required of you.

“Meanwhile, I'm due down at the cathedral for a rehearsal, so I'm going to have one of my aides take you to your quarters. They're very near mine; he'll show you where. While I'm gone, I want you to lie down and get some rest. I'll send my Healer to you later on, to see if any really serious damage was done.”

“A Healer?” Faelan said, stiffening. “A Deryni?”

“He's been
my
Healer for about four years, off and on,” Javan assured him, wondering at the reaction. “If it's any reassurance, he's also Archbishop Hubert's pet Deryni—so I think you can assume he's safe.”

“But I—”

“Relax, Father. He won't hurt you. But if you prefer, I'll wait to send him until I can come with him,” Javan said. They came up to Guiscard, who turned and fell into step with them as they continued back around the fountain.

“Guiscard, I'd like you to take Father Faelan up and show him his quarters. See that he has whatever he'd like to eat—and a bath, if he wants one. After that, he's to rest for the afternoon. Be sure that he does. I'll meet you in my quarters after the rehearsal, and we'll make that inspection with the Master of Works.”

“Very good, Sire.”

They continued on into the shade of the cloister colonnade and headed for the stair, but just before entering the stairwell, Javan paused to bend and fidget with a buckle on his boot.

“Give me a hand with this, would you, Guiscard?” he said.

When Guiscard crouched to see what the problem was, Javan straightened to catch his balance on the knight's shoulder, fingers brushing against the bare flesh of Guiscard's neck and using that physical contact to send a brief but cogent message.

Keep a sharp eye on this one until we know more about him
, he sent.
I have an awful suspicion that Paulin may have had a Deryni at him whom no one knows about. Hands off, though, because I don't know yet what might have been done to him that might be detected
.

As Guiscard straightened, dusting off his hands, his eyes met Javan's over Faelan's bowed head and he gave a nod. At least somewhat reassured, Javan headed on up the stairs to rejoin Charlan and the others, not at all looking forward to the next few hours.

C
HAPTER
S
EVENTEEN

For the hand of the artificer the work shall be commended
.

—Ecclesiasticus 9:17

In fact, the rehearsal went far more smoothly than Javan had feared, though Paulin seemed distinctly annoyed that the king had not brought his new chaplain with him.

“Well, he seemed exhausted,” Javan remarked, when asked where Faelan was. “I expect it was the heat—or maybe the unaccustomed ride. I know
I
was exhausted after making the same journey last month. I told him to lie down for the rest of the afternoon. If he isn't looking better soon, I may have Master Oriel see him.”

Paulin gave him a long, appraising look and then a slight inclination of his head. “I'm told he had been feeling poorly, this last week or so. In fact, I believe he was bled to relieve the ill humours. No doubt he'll recover quickly, though.”

“Hmmm, no doubt,” Javan murmured. “Excuse me, Father,” he added as Tammaron beckoned for him to move to another position farther up the cathedral aisle.

When the rehearsal finally ended and Javan could return to the castle, he and Charlan found Guiscard waiting to escort them to the chosen Portal site as planned.

“How is Father Faelan?” Javan asked as the three of them headed down a back stair to the next level.

“Asleep” was Guiscard's reply. “He had a light meal, he all but fell asleep in the bath, then roused himself just long enough to dress and stagger to his bed, where he passed out. He hasn't moved since, though I've checked to make sure he hasn't died. I didn't try to probe further, because of what you told me, but I'd say he's had a rough time of it.”

“Later tonight I'll tell you
how
rough,” Javan murmured. “Did you leave a guard outside his door?”

“Of course. Do you think he's a spy for Paulin?”

“Oh, I'm certain that's Paulin's intention. Whether it will hold remains to be seen.”

They came out on a landing and turned left at Guiscard's gesture. Javan knew that both he and Charlan were dying to know more, but this was not the time. For now he must turn his attention to the potential Portal site. So far he liked the proximity and approach.

The corridor walls were newly whitewashed, with pine-knot torches set in cressets to light the way where daylight from other landings and open doors did not reach. New-laid black and white tiles as wide as the length of a man's forearm paved the floor underfoot, set diagonally in a chequerboard design.

Outside some of the open doors, stocks of timber and nails and carpenters' tools vied with buckets and brushes for space, everything layered with a fine sheen of chalky dust. The clean aroma of newly planed wood mingled with the sharper lime scent of the whitewash and the tang of pine resin from the torches. As they ventured farther along the corridor, the sounds of hammering and sawing and the rhythmic ring of steel on stone grew gradually louder, coming from an open doorway ahead and on the left, where a fine haze of dust shimmered on a slanting beam of late-afternoon sun.

“Your library will be in here, Sire,” Guiscard said, indicating the open doorway and standing to one side as they came abreast of it.

As Javan stepped into the opening, shading his eyes against the glare of sunlight, the sounds of men at work fell off almost immediately. Scaffolding overhead creaked alarmingly, and Javan instinctively ducked his head as he glanced up and continued into the room until he was clear of it. Charlan and Guiscard followed close behind him, and Master William materialized out of the haze to the left, mallet and chisel in dust-streaked hands.

“Sire, you honor us,” Master William said with a bow. “Pray, pardon the disarray.”

“Nay, 'tis I who should pray pardon for interrupting your work,” Javan replied, already looking around appraisingly. “And it is you who honor me by your fine craftsmanship. I had no idea such progress had been made. But please, have your men continue.”

“As you wish, Sire.”

As the men resumed work, Master William lingering nearby in case the king should have a question, Javan moved farther into the whitewashed brilliance of the room and allowed his gaze to range around it, squinting less as his eyes adjusted to the glare. It was a fine, large room, well suited for a library, with two tall, wide window embrasures in the wall opposite the door that spilled an abundance of afternoon sunlight over the flagstones of the floor. Walking over to one of the windows, Javan stepped up into its alcove to see the view, but there were only the stable yards below. A beefy, sunburned man was fitting thin slabs of greeny-grey stone to the windowsills, and gave a companionable nod as Javan bent to inspect his work.

“That's unusual color on that stone,” Javan said, peering more closely at the sill and touching a fingertip to an edge. “What is it? It looks like slate, but I've never seen green before.”

“Och, ye won't see the green around here, milord, 'cept in the very finest buildings,” the man said easily, smiling as he ran a mortar-roughened hand lovingly along one of the joins. “Lord Tammaron ordered it. Comes from a quarry down by Nyford—not nearly as common as the blue and grey ye get locally, but it do make up pretty, don't it?”

“Aye, it's lovely.”

Nodding to himself in satisfaction, Javan moved back out of the embrasure to survey the rest of the room. Carpenters were building shelves and pigeonholes across the wall now to his left, and a stonecutter was chiseling at something on one of the supports of a massive fireplace dominating the other end wall. Crouched on the scaffolding above the doorway, a painter was laying down color in the outlines of a bold interlace design dominated by blues and greens, joining it in with work already twining upward along either side. Seeing Javan's interest, Master William came nearer.

“We plan to repeat that design around the windows, Sire,” he volunteered. “The greens will tone with the green of the slate. We've been told to set slate on the floor, as well, but just in the window embrasures. It's—ah—rather expensive.”

“So I gathered,” Javan said. He glanced at Charlan and Guiscard, waiting patiently just to one side of the scaffolding, and nodded as the latter indicated it was time to go.

“Well, thank you, Master William. I'm very pleased. I've other engagements now, but I'll have a quick look at a few of the other rooms on my way out. Good day to all of you.”

“Sire,” the man replied with a bow, the other men also stopping work briefly to tug at forelocks as he went out.

“Most of the rest of the rooms on this level will be set aside as guest chambers,” Guiscard said rather more loudly than he needed to, shepherding them left as they went out the door. “If you'll come this way, Sire, I'll show you a typical one.”

The door to the next room was closed, but Guiscard pushed it open and led the way in. Like the library, it was plastered and whitewashed over the stone, but hardly a third the size, with a single window embrasure in the wall opposite the door, deep enough for one person to sit on either side.

The window itself was mullioned, with lead cames holding lozenge-shaped panes of glass in the lower half and wood shutters closing off the upper. To the right of the window, occupying the corner angle of the room, was a tiny fireplace with a nicely carved hood. The floor was paved with smooth square and rectangular flagstones set in a random pattern.

“Very fine,” Javan commented, for the benefit of anyone who might be listening in the corridor. “Are they all to this standard?”

“They are,” Guiscard replied, stepping very deliberately onto a square flag in the center of the room—the only one both square and in the center—and turning to look pointedly at Javan. “No garde-robes in rooms this small, of course, Sire, but they'll be quite comfortable, nonetheless—especially these that catch the afternoon sun.”

“Yes, I can see that.” Javan stepped briefly into the window embrasure to peer out the window. Like the library windows, this one also overlooked the stable yards. Dusting off his hands, he stepped back down and eyed the square where Guiscard was still standing.

“Well, I've seen enough,” he said, moving toward the door. “We'd better get back. I want a bath before I have to face a public supper.”

Guiscard pulled the door shut behind them—it already had its inside bolt, Javan had noted—and the three retreated down the corridor in silence, each alone with his thoughts of what the room would mean the next time they entered it.

Supper, fortunately, was not the ordeal Javan had feared. All of his enemies were there, but so were his friends; and everyone seemed determined to put on congenial faces, now that court mourning was ended and things were gearing up for the coronation, but three days away.

Still eschewing Haldane crimson, Javan wore a long, tawny green-gold tunic of raw silk, discreetly jewelled at cuffs and standing collar but open at the throat, belted with a girdle of bronze plaques set with amber. The dagger at his hip was a border dirk set with a water-pale cairngorm in the pommel, like sunlight on peat in a highland stream. By careful combing of his hair, he was able to wear the hammered gold circlet of running lions without a cap of maintenance—no technical pretense of crown, but more than a prince's coronet. The Eye of Rom gleamed in his right earlobe and the Ring of Fire winked on his left hand beside his signet.

The end of official mourning had brought the ladies out again—the wives and daughters of the great lords in residence and a few early arrivals for the coronation to come. The pastels and muted hues of their raiment were welcome relief from the blacks and greys of strict mourning, even though bright colors or too-gaudy adornment were still to be eschewed until coronation day itself. Still, the feminine presence lent an air of gentility to what had been largely an all-male enclave during those first few weeks. The fare was simple but plentiful, the wine ample, the music soothing and unobtrusive.

It was a night for circulating rather than sitting still, at least for everyone but the king. Somewhat to Javan's surprise, unlike any other public banquet of his experience, the guests came to him. Either Charlan or Guiscard was always at his back, ready to answer his questions, prompt him on the names of guests, or simply bring him what he needed. Rhys Michael started out sitting at his right, cool in the royal blue of the heir, but soon after eating, he asked to be excused. Later, Javan noticed him in one of the window embrasures off to the right, with Cathan Drummond and the two Fitz-Arthur boys again, talking animatedly to several pretty girls, one of whom was Michaela.

“Charlan says that my brother fancies Michaela Drummond,” Javan said to Guiscard during a lull between courtiers and their ladies come to offer greetings. He sipped at a cup of ale as he noted the pert profile and the sweep of a thick, bronze-gold braid falling past her waist. “Is that your impression, as well?”

“If he does, he has good taste,” Guiscard replied, “but I can't say I've noticed anything in particular. She's a fine-looking lass, though, and well regarded. She'd make a better royal bride than many I could name who're campaigning for the job.”