The Bishop’s Heir (54 page)

“Then, they
were
Deryni,” she whispered. She turned a pinched, desperate face toward her dead husband's brother. “Nigel, you were there. What saw you? Who were they? Are there so many of them that they may walk unrecognized among us with impunity?”

Nigel, of course, knew little more than Jehana in that regard, for he had not been privy to the intentions of the Camberian Council—only their actual intervention. But his uneasy dissembling was sufficient to lead Jehana back to the old, relatively safe topic of Morgan, whose Deryni proclivities were a secret to no one. As Jehana launched into yet another variation on the old fears, Kelson let his thoughts turn to a delicious contemplation of the Deryni at court that Jehana did
not
know about.

She had not yet made the connection about Richenda, of course—though she had skirted uncomfortably close. And it obviously had not occurred to her to question Arilan. The knowledge that a Deryni had risen through the ecclesiastical ranks unbeknownst and attained the rank of bishop would shake her faith to the core; surely such a deception could only be the work of the Devil, an attempt to destroy the Faith from within. Of course, Duncan had managed a similar rise—but few outside episcopal ranks were certain that he was Deryni, and much could be blamed on his Deryni cousin Morgan.

Dhugal, of course, was an entirely different matter. Outside Kelson's immediate circle of close confidants—Morgan, Richenda, Duncan, and Dhugal himself—only Nigel and Arilan even knew that Dhugal was Deryni, much less that he was Duncan's son; and even Nigel and Arilan did not know the latter. One must assume that the Camberian Council also knew at least what Arilan knew—and that they fretted over Dhugal and the mystery of his powers the same way they fretted over Morgan and Duncan—but other than those few, Kelson doubted anyone even suspected.

He took a deep draught of the light, nutty ale Nigel had provided with supper—wine might have blunted their senses for the ritual still to come—and hid a smile behind his cup as he nodded and made noncommittal grunts in response to his mother's continuing monologue.

That Dhugal was Deryni, and Duncan's son, still amazed and delighted him. The revelation had even eased some of the awful, heart-numbing shock of Sidana's murder, that terrible Twelfth Night but a few months past. Letting the dull buzz of his mother's voice carry him back, he set himself to savor the memory—able, from this distance, to let even the echo of his grief lap at his emotions as he anticipated the joy to follow.

He had been sitting hunched in a bath before the fireplace in his bedchamber, trying to let the warm water ease the chill that seemed to penetrate to his very soul. He had long since washed Sidana's blood from his hands, but a part of him still kept going numbly through the motions, as if further ablution could somehow wash her blood from his soul as well.

He was vaguely aware of others moving about quietly in the room—Morgan, Duncan, Dhugal—and felt their compassion as a warm, comforting presence intended to ease his pain; but he was too tight-coiled in his own hurt and guilt and outrage to let their caring penetrate very deeply. He still did not know whether he had truly loved Sidana, but ultimate responsibility for her death remained squarely upon him in any case, even though another hand had wielded the dagger.

She had been under his protection, and he had failed her. Her marriage ring glinted bright and accusing as his hands continued their vague movement underneath the water. He had slipped it on his little finger as he held her lifeless body in his arms, crouched there in the blood-spattered sanctuary that so short a time before had been witness to their marriage.

“I think you've been in there long enough, my prince,” Morgan said quietly, suddenly appearing out of the shadows from behind him with a thick, thirsty towel. “Come dry yourself. Duncan's making you a warm posset to help you sleep.”

As he obeyed, dully standing to let Morgan wrap him in the towel, he became aware of small sounds in the room: the crackle of the fire, metal clinking against pottery at the small table where Duncan worked by candlelight, his own shallow breathing. Stepping damply onto thick Kheldish carpet, he allowed himself to be guided to a deep, engulfing chair nearer the hearth. When he had settled, Duncan put a warm cup in his hand and sat down on a stool; Dhugal had already taken a similar seat within reach of Kelson's knee. Morgan remained standing, his back to the fire, one arm resting along the carved stone of the mantel, the firelight limning his golden hair from behind so that he seemed to be haloed.

“Drink what Duncan's given you,” his mentor said softly, jutting his chin toward the cup. “It will help to blunt some of the pain.”

He was aware, as he drained the cup obediently, that the three of them were exchanging a curious set of glances, but he sensed nothing but concern for him in their manner—certainly no reason for alarm. The posset was laced with strong wine, and almost too hot. It was not until Kelson handed the cup back empty that he could detect the faintly tangy aftertaste of something Duncan had given him before—the expected sedative. Dhugal coughed, looking almost nervous as Duncan set the cup aside, and Morgan laced his fingers together, one elbow still resting casually on the mantel.

“Dhugal and Duncan have something to tell you,” Morgan said softly, the grey eyes dark with compassion. “I wish you could have learned it under happier circumstances, but perhaps it will help to ease your sorrow now. I think you will not be displeased.”

Curious despite his grief, Kelson turned his gaze on Duncan, who had laid his hand on Dhugal's shoulder. The sedative was already blurring his ability to make his eyes focus, but his thinking was still reasonably clear and would remain so for several minutes, he knew.

“Dhugal and I made a marvelous discovery before we left for the cathedral this morning,” Duncan said, smiling as Dhugal glanced at him and grinned. “It has to do with the cloak clasp he's wearing. I believe you've admired it at various times?”

For the first time Kelson noticed that although Dhugal had changed from border tartans to funereal black, he still wore the fist-sized lion-headed brooch that he said had been his mother's.

“What about it?” he asked, glancing back at Duncan.

Duncan's grin abruptly matched Dhugal's. “Well, it's a McLain badge—see the closed eyes?—the McLain sleeping lion. My father had it made for me. I gave it to my wife on our wedding night.”

“Your wife …?” Kelson murmured, stunned.

“To Dhugal's mother, as it turned out,” Duncan went on happily. “You see, Dhugal is my son.”

Even now, Kelson remembered few further details of that evening, though later explorations of the happy news brought him a joy that did, indeed, ease a little of the shock of Sidana's death. But as he flashed on the somber days of her lying-in-state and funeral, and his visits since then to the simple tomb in the crypt where she slept with other of Gwynedd's former kings and queens, he was jarred back to the present by her name on his mother's lips.

“… cannot grieve forever over this Sidana,” she was saying. “You hardly knew the girl. You have a duty to take another bride. That's why I've come back from the convent: to help you find one. A suitable wife can help to expiate the curse I've placed upon you.”

“And what, pray tell, was not ‘suitable' about the bride
I
chose?” Kelson said irritably, setting his cup aside with a hollow clunk. “Even by your standards, Mother, Sidana was ‘suitable' in every respect: princess of a noble house whose union with our own might have forged a lasting peace; young and beautiful; almost certainly able to provide healthy heirs.

“Nor was she either Deryni or in sympathy with Deryni. And her own brother killed her, with a solid, reliable, un-Deryni knife!”

“You know that isn't what I meant—” Jehana began.

“No, don't lecture me about ‘suitable' brides, Mother,” Kelson went on. “I was prepared to do my dynastic duty, and chose my bride for all the ‘right' reasons. You must pardon me if I do not seem overeager to leap into the matrimonial sea again, quite so quickly!”

Jehana shook her head, lips compressed in a thin line. “Not now, of course, Kelson. But soon—”

“Not
too
soon, Mother. In case you've forgotten, I have a war to fight this summer—one of the little legacies of my brief foray into matrimony. And as if the Mearan rebellion were not already far enough advanced, her family now blame me for Sidana's death as well as Llewell's. The dispute over Mearan sovereignty has taken on the added dimension of a blood feud, despite the fact that it was Llewell who killed Sidana—not I—and that Llewell was executed for his crime of murder, not because I particularly wanted him dead.”

“You would have to have done away with him eventually, in any case,” Jehana said coldly. “So long as he lived, he would have remained a threat. Any issue of his body—”

“Mother …”

Pushing himself away from the table with an exasperated sigh and a scraping of heavy chair legs against stone, Kelson stood and glanced at Nigel and Meraude, who had remained notably silent throughout this last exchange.

“Fortunately, the subject of Llewell's issue has been rendered academic,” Kelson said patiently, catching Nigel's eye in signal that it was time to make their escape. “Nor have I any wish to discuss the matter further this evening. The commanders of my northern army leave for Cassan tomorrow morning, and there are matters Nigel and I must discuss before then. Uncle, would you please make your apologies to the ladies? We still have work ahead of us before we sleep.”

He could only admire Nigel's coolness as the older man rose to take his leave. Though he knew Nigel trusted him and his Deryni colleagues implicitly, and they him, he must have harbored some apprehension about the “work” still ahead of them, if only for the fact that he was the object of that work and did not know what would be done to him. Still, he showed no glimmer of anything but relaxed duty as he pulled a cloak around his shoulders and advised Meraude not to wait up.

“You know how long Kelson's staff meetings sometimes last, darling,” he told her. “We could be half the night. You and the little one need your rest.”

Meraude smiled and laid one hand on her swollen abdomen as her husband followed Kelson out, glancing aside at Jehana wistfully when the door had closed behind them. Jehana looked a bit taken aback, as if she could not quite believe how Kelson had managed his escape.

“He's become quite the young man while you were away, hasn't he?” Meraude said.

Jehana lowered her gaze. “I hardly recognize him,” she whispered. “He's so stern and warlike—and grown-up.”

“Children do that,” Meraude answered gently. “I'm having to face the same realization about Conall. And Rory comes of age in the fall as well—though fourteen-year-olds still have a little time for being boys yet.”

“Mine didn't,” Jehana murmured.

“True. But Kelson was already a king by the time he turned fourteen. For Rory to face a similar circumstance would require tragedy indeed. No, Rory is my little boy for yet a while longer—and Payne, of course. And soon there'll be the new baby for loving. But I
do
hope this one will be a girl.”

Jehana grimaced. “A girl, to become a pawn one day for a royal marriage?”

“A girl, to marry where her heart dictates, if God wills it,” Meraude replied. “With three older brothers to carry on the line, I see little reason to force her into any marriage she would not want. Or perhaps she will prefer marriage with the Church. I gather that would not displease you.”

Jehana smiled bitterly, tracing a fingertip through a small spill of ale on the table before her. “Would that my marriage had been with the Church, and saved the passing of the taint I carry within me,” she murmured.

“And what of Kelson, if you had?” Meraude countered. “Aside from the fact that Kelson would not have been Kelson, given another mother, where would he have been without your inheritance and protection when he had to face Charissa?”

“He might have died,” Jehana conceded. “But at least he would have been human, his soul unsullied by the Deryni curse I placed upon him by bearing him.”

Shaking her head, Meraude pushed herself heavily back from the table. “You won't let go of it, will you? You're Deryni, Jehana. Nothing you can do will change that. But perhaps it doesn't
have
to be a curse. Surely it's possible
some
good might come of it.”

“I fear you listen far too much to my son,” Jehana said sadly. “It
is
a curse, Meraude. It is a canker that festers within me—and here at my son's court. Nor may I rest until I find a way to exorcise it.”

Exorcism of a far different sort than Jehana had in mind was underway in another part of the castle, performed by a man who bore the very taint Jehana feared. Murmuring ritual words of purification, Bishop Duncan McLain slowly paced the circumference of the tiny Saint Camber chapel adjoining his study, methodically sprinkling the chamber with water from a silver aspergillum. Incense already hung lightly on the air. From the doorway leading back into the study, Dhugal watched and made the responses, eyes following his father's every move with reverence and respect. They had finished nearly all the other preparations necessary before the rest arrived. The censing and asperging of the chapel was the final touch, done as much to center and steady the two participants as to cleanse a room long sanctified by its sacred use.

“Asperges me, Domine, hyssopo, et mundabor: lavabis me, et super nivem dealbabor.”

“Amen.”

“Pax huic domui.”

“Et omnibus habitantibus in ea.”

Peace be to this house.…

And to all who dwell in it.…

When they had done, and Duncan had put aside that paraphernalia of his office, father and son returned to the study, Duncan drawing into place the curtain that normally covered the door. Dhugal lingered a moment, eyeing the curtain with still-awed speculation as Duncan took a seat at the round table set before the room's fireplace. One candle burned at the center of that table, giving the only illumination save for the firelight. After a moment, Dhugal came and joined his father, though he still continued to glance at the curtained doorway from time to time.