The Bishop’s Heir (45 page)

“Suppose you tell me about it,” Morgan said softly. “I'm not a priest, but I think you know that my word of confidence is just as binding to me as any sacramental seal.”

Duncan allowed himself a wry smile. “If it's true, I doubt I'm going to be able to keep it secret very long,” he said in a low voice. “If I could have chosen a son, he would have been very much like Dhugal. And if he
is
my son, then he has a right to know.”

“Sometimes it's better not to know,” Morgan said tentatively. “If he's illegitimate—”

“My son is not a bastard!” Duncan said emphatically. “His mother and I were free to marry at the time, and we exchanged vows which we considered binding. In our eyes and in the eyes of God, she was my wife.”

“And in the eyes of the law?”

Duncan shook his head and sighed. “That I don't know. It's going to be a tricky point of canon law, at very least. It's called—” He dug for the term, forcing calm on his mind by the discipline. “I think it's called
per verba de praesenti
—a vow in front of witnesses, rather than a ceremony performed by a priest. At least in theory, it's as binding as a betrothal, which is as binding as a marriage.”

“You can produce the witnesses?” Morgan asked.

Duncan hung his head, remembering that night so very long ago, shrouded in that twilight land of memory between childhood and maturity—he and Maryse kneeling in the chapel at midnight, fearful of interruption at any time, making their prayers before the only witness whose understanding they could count on, with her father's men preparing to move out of his father's courtyard at the break of dawn.

“
Before Thee as the Supreme Witness, my Lord and my God, I make this solemn vow
,” Duncan had said, eyes turned toward the Presence Lamp burning brightly above the altar. “
That I take this woman, Maryse, as my lawful wedded wife, forsaking all others until death do us part.”

The pin of the clasp at his throat was stiff, and he had fumbled as he unfastened it and laid it in her hand, gazing down at her with all the desperation of love soon to be parted.

“
I give thee this token of my love and take thee for my wife, and hereto I plight thee my troth.”

“The witnesses,” came Morgan's soft prompting. “Can you produce them?”

Duncan's shoulders slumped and he shook his head. “We spoke our vows before the Blessed Sacrament, Alaric,” he said softly. “There was none other we could trust. As I said, the strict legality will be considered to be hazy.”

“I see.” Morgan sighed. “Very well, let's not worry about that for the moment. How do you know that the clasp Dhugal is wearing is the one you gave—what was her name? Maryse?”

“Yes.” Duncan swallowed painfully. “The—clasp that I gave as pledge was unique. The artisan who'd made it put a sort of locket compartment in the back. Unless one knew what to look for, it would never even be noticed. If that
is
my clasp, then in that compartment there will be one of my hairs intertwined with one of hers. She had very fair hair—almost white.”

Morgan sighed again, even more heavily than before.

“Very well. What do you intend to do about this? Do you want to confront Dhugal now, or can it wait until after the wedding?”

“I don't think I can wait, Alaric,” Duncan replied, looking up at his cousin's face for the first time since his confession. “I know it may sound strange, after all these years, but I have to know. I don't thing I could stand up there, across from him, and celebrate Kelson's marriage, and not know whether my brief marriage bore fruit or not.”

Morgan nodded slowly. “Being a father myself now, I can understand that,” he said softly, then quirked an odd, lopsided grin back at him. “If Dhugal
is
your son, though, won't
that
throw consternation into the Mearan ranks? You'd have an heir of your body to succeed to the Cassan and Kierney titles—and so much for the hopes of reuniting those lands with Meara for an independent kingdom again.”

Duncan snorted. “That honestly hadn't occurred to me, but you're right. And all the more reason for finding out, and then figuring out how to acknowledge him so that there can be no question of his right to the titles.” He glanced back at the fire. “I certainly could have asked for better timing, though. A bishop's son is going to raise more than a few eyebrows.”

“You weren't a bishop at the time, or even a priest.”

“No. It's still going to smack of conspiracies, however.”

“I couldn't agree more. Would you like me to go and find him? We've not much time, but I'll do the best I can.”

“Please do,” Duncan whispered. “Don't tell him why I want to see him, though. I—need to do that myself.”

“Believe me, that's the last thing I intend to do,” Morgan murmured, as he rose and left the room.

Duncan did not move for several seconds. One hand over his face, he tried to push back the hope, the expectation, just in case he was mistaken. He told himself there were many ways Dhugal could have gotten the clasp—if, indeed, it really was the same one. He tried to tell himself it might not be. But deep inside, he knew it was, and how it had come into Dhugal's keeping.

Though neither he nor Maryse had thought about the possibility of issue, in that one, brief, tearful, fumbling union of innocents, he saw the scenario as it unfolded behind his closed eyelids: Maryse, months later, safe back at Transha for the winter, her father and elder brothers off to war with the king's troops, discovering that she was with child. Fearful, at first, to tell another soul, but then, as it became less and less possible to hide, the tearful confession to her mother, who was also expecting—and the plan evolving, so that Maryse might bear her child in secret and give it to her mother, to be raised as twin to the child due but a month or so before. In the fastness of a border winter, with the menfolk wintering in Meara, and the circumspectness of a few serving women, who would have known?

And then, when Maryse died, whether of childbirth complications or the fever which was given out as the reason, who else was to know? Duncan, when he had heard of her death the following summer, certainly had never put two and two together. News of her death had only turned him back to his original plans to continue in holy orders and become a priest. Before too long, the brief, intense days at Culdi held only the poignant memory of a particularly vivid dream which now would never be. He had never told a soul, save a long-dead confessor—not even Morgan.

Blinking back tears, Duncan rose and went to the desk beneath the amber window, taking out the
shiral
on its fine leather cord. It had been
her
gift—and all unwittingly, he had used it to test their son for sign of a magical heritage which
certainly
existed; no doubt about that now. He held it by the cords as he returned to his chair and sat, holding it before his eyes like the talisman it had become.

Shiral
.

As he closed it in his fist, he was taken back to that chapel again, and the vows they had made.

“
I take thee as my wedded husband
,” she had said. “
I give thee this token as a sign of my love, and hereto I plight thee my troth.”

She had taken it from her own neck, still warm from her body, and placed it around his neck. Trembling, he placed it there again and pressed the stone to his lips, startling as a knock at the door intruded on the memory.

“Come,” he called, slipping the necklace into the front of his cassock.

He rose as they came into the room, Morgan ushering a curiously expectant Dhugal.

“You wanted to see me, Father Duncan?” the boy asked.

Duncan hardly trusted himself to speak as he gestured for Dhugal to be seated. Morgan was looking very uncertain, but Duncan nodded for him to remain as well.

“Sit down, please—both of you,” Duncan said, himself sitting as Dhugal complied. “I—realize that this is awkward timing, but I didn't think it could wait. It—may get more awkward, yet.”

“I don't think I understand,” Dhugal replied, perching gingerly on the edge of his chair. “Is it something I've done?”

Duncan smiled despite his apprehension. “No, nothing you've done. Would you indulge me for just a moment?”

“If I can.”

“Very well. Without asking me why, I'd like you to take off your cloak clasp and look at the back of it.”

With a puzzled glance at Morgan, Dhugal obeyed, fumbling wordlessly with the pin. When he had given the back a cursory glance, he looked up at Duncan in question. The bishop was gazing into the fireplace, the flames reflecting from his light eyes.

“What am I supposed to see?” Dhugal whispered, after a slight hesitation.

Duncan swallowed visibly. “Along the top edge, you'll find a fine crack. If you'll pry it with a fingernail, it should open. If there's something inside, I'd like you not to tell me what it is, just yet. All right?”

With a shrug and a puzzled glance at the stony-faced Morgan, Dhugal grunted his agreement and worried at the clasp with a thumbnail. He jumped a little as something gave, then bent to peer more closely into the compartment he had just discovered.

“What the—how did you know? How did you know there was even a compartment?”

Duncan gave a resigned sigh and sat back in his chair, covering his eyes with the hand nearest Dhugal and leaning wearily on that elbow.

“May I tell you a brief story, Dhugal?” he whispered.

Mystified, Dhugal nodded and sat back in his chair, still glancing down at the clasp in his hand from time to time.

“Your description of how you came by the clasp struck the first chord,” Duncan murmured. “How your father gave it to your mother when they were married. I've never told anyone about this before, but something like what you described happened to me when I was only a little younger than you. I fell in love with a beautiful and loving young girl, and all thought of becoming a priest went out of my mind. She was from your clan, and we planned to ask our parents' permission to be married as soon as our fathers returned from the campaign they were on. That's why she and her mother and sisters were at my father's castle.

“Something happened between the clans while they were on that campaign, however. Her eldest brother was killed in a drunken brawl with one of my father's men, and there was the very real possibility of a bitter blood feud, even though the guilty McLain man was duly executed. Her father and his men came back to Culdi just long enough to pack up the women and children and prepare to ride out the following dawn.

“In any case, to make a long story short, we realized that our fathers would never let us marry, under the circumstances—at least not for a very long time—so we exchanged vows in the darkened chapel. She gave me a token, and I gave her a cloak clasp very similar to the one in your hand. In fact, that could be the very one.”

Dhugal had followed the entire story with increasing amazement, and now he glanced at the clasp in his hand again, suspicion beginning to niggle at the edges of consciousness.

“May—may I ask what her name was?” he breathed.

“Maryse MacArdry,” Duncan whispered. “And if only in the eyes of ourselves and of God, she was my wife for that brief night.”

“But—Maryse was my sister's name. She died the same winter I was born.”

“Yes, I heard that the following summer,” Duncan said, “and that her mother had borne twins about the same time. Until I saw you wearing that cloak clasp, it had never even occurred to me that one of those children might be mine.”

“You mean, me?” Dhugal asked, in a very small voice.

Duncan dropped his hand to look full into Dhugal's eyes.

“Shall I tell you what you found inside the compartment of your cloak clasp?” he asked.

Solemnly, fearfully, Dhugal nodded.

“The afternoon before we made our vows, Maryse took strands of our hair and wove them into a ring, using longer strands from our ponies' tails to form the framework. I know that you don't remember her, if you ever even saw her, but you may have seen paintings. Her hair was silver blond, even lighter than Alaric's. The horsehairs were black. I think that's what you'll find, if you'll pull out what's inside.”

Almost afraid to breathe, Dhugal prodded at the compartment in the clasp and worried loose precisely that: a mostly dark ring of hair, oval in shape from having been compressed, with a strand of purest silver braided into the design. As Dhugal held it tremblingly between thumb and forefinger, not daring to speak, Morgan leaned forward and spoke for the first time.

“If one of the hairs is Duncan's, I'll be able to detect it, Dhugal,” he said quietly. “And if it isn't, I'll tell you that, too. May I hold it?”

Wordlessly, Dhugal placed it on his outstretched palm, glancing fearfully at Duncan as he did so. Morgan closed his eyes for several seconds, the ring closed lightly in his fist then passed it across to Duncan.

“It
is
one of your hairs,” he said softly. “But that doesn't prove that Dhugal is your son—only that you probably did have the relationship with Maryse that you've described. Dhugal could still be Caulay's child. You have a twin sister, don't you, Dhugal?”

“It—sounds like I have another aunt or niece,” Dhugal breathed, “depending on which one of us was Maryse's child.”

“That's true,” Duncan murmured. “But I would be willing to wager everything I hold dear, including any slight chance I may have of salvation, that you are Maryse's child. Shall I tell you why?”

Dhugal nodded solemnly.

“Because Maryse's child by me would be part Deryni—and I think that's what we've been getting hints of, ever since you and Kelson got back together,” Duncan said steadily. “I think that night at Transha, when you helped Kelson reach Alaric, was a catalyst that went awry. Your Deryni potentials started to be touched for the first time, but it was frightening, and you froze up. That would also explain why, when we later tried to read you and find out what had been going on, you felt most comfortable with me. Do you remember?”