The Bishop’s Heir (56 page)

“Embue me with the garment of innocence and the vesture of light, O Lord,” Jorian recited softly, from inside the new white alb Denis was pulling over his head. “May I worthily receive Thy gifts and worthily dispense them.”

The linen smelled of sunshine and summer breezes, and fell in soft folds over Jorian's cassock as Denis helped him with the ties at the throat.

You don't have to go through with this, you know,
Denis whispered mind-to-mind, as only Deryni could, the link enhanced by the contact of their hands.

Three other candidates were also vesting in the library of
Arx Fidei
Seminary on this balmy August morning, each of them also assisted by a senior seminarian, for the usual vesting area in the church sacristy had been taken over by the visiting archbishop and his entourage, as was always the case for ordinations.

What if it's true?
Denis went on.
Jorian, listen to me! If they find you out, they'll kill you!

Jorian only smiled as he took a white silk cincture from Denis and looped it around his waist, murmuring the accompanying prayer as he tied it.

“Bind me to Thee, O Christ, with the cords of love and the girdle of purity, that Thy power may dwell in me.”

Jorian, what if it's true?
Denis insisted.

Maybe it ISN'T true,
Jorian responded mentally, in far more intimate exchange than mere speech would have allowed, especially with others nearby, who must never find out that the two were Deryni.
But we'll never know if someone doesn't take the chance. I'm the logical someone. I'm not highly trained like you are—nor ever wanted to be—so I'll be far less of a loss to our people if I AM caught. Being a priest is what I was born to do, Denis—and if I can't do that, I might just as well be dead.

That's crazy talk!

Maybe. I'm not turning back now, though, when I'm so close. If I'm supposed to be ordained, God will look after me.

Jorian paused to recite another prayer aloud as he laid the white deacon's stole over his left shoulder and let Denis bend to secure it at the right hip.

“Oh Thou who hast said, ‘My yoke is easy and my burden is light,' grant that I may bear Thy blessing to all the world.”

And if I DON'T make it
, Jorian went on mentally,
maybe you'll make it for me.

Denis was too well schooled to let himself change expression, as Jorian slipped the maniple over his left forearm and secured it, whispering another prayer, but he knew Jorian was right. Though they had been careful to play down their friendship all through seminary, so that Jorian's fall, if it came, would not drag down Denis as well, neither of them had ever harbored illusions that things could end in other than this ultimate testing.
Someone
must be the forerunner, and Jorian was it. The Church had taught for nearly two centuries that Deryni must not seek priestly ordination, on pain of death, and that God would strike down any Deryni presumptuous enough to try. Tradition had it that He had done so, many times, in the years immediately after the onset of the great anti-Deryni persecutions, early in the tenth century. And every seminary had its horror stories, impressed on every entering seminarian, of what had happened to those who had tried since.

As a result, there had been no Deryni priests or bishops in Gwynedd for nearly two hundred years. None that Denis's teachers knew of, in any even—and they were in a position to know, if anyone was. But if Deryni were ever to reverse the persecution of their people and regain a place of dignity and shared authority in the kingdom, part of the impetus must come from within the Church, by gradually reversing the teaching that Deryni were evil because of the powers they could wield. That meant not only reinfiltrating the Church, but eventually assuming positions of high authority again. Denis Arilan's teachers hoped for nothing less than a bishopric for their prize student and had been relieved, if saddened, when the older and less talented Jorian de Courcy elected to clear the way for Denis by going first.

“Your attention please, reverend sirs,” came a low voiced warning from Father Loyall, the abbot's chaplain, as he stuck his tonsured head through the library doorway and then stood aside.

As Father Calbert, the energetic young Abbot of
Arx Fidei
, came into the library with several members of his faculty and a few visiting priests, all eyes turned toward him, the four candidates making hurried last-minute adjustments to their vestments. Denis retreated with the other seniors who had been assisting, and all of them bowed dutifully as Calbert raised both hands in blessing and gave them ritual greeting.

“Pax vobiscum, filii mei.”

“Deo gratias, Reverendissimus Pater,”
they replied in unison.

“Ah, such fine priests you will all make,” Calbert murmured, beaming with approval as he inspected his charges. “Choir, you may go and take your places while I have a few final words with your brethren.”

Denis fell into line obediently with the other three, eyes averted, as was seemly, but as he passed closest to Jorian, he sent his mental farewell winging to the other's mind in a final act of defiance—not of Calbert, for he was a most learned and holy man, but of the outrage of a law that made this a day of dread for Jorian when it should have been a day of joy. Without physical contact to facilitate the mental link, and with Jorian not actively seeking it himself, the brief rapport took a great deal of energy, but Jorian's weaker but no less fervent thank-you made it all worthwhile in that instant just before the door closed between them.

Then Denis was out in the cloister garth and falling into line behind the thurifers and processional cross with his classmates, his voice joining with theirs in the entrance hymn as his heart lifted in a final prayer that Jorian might be granted his priesthood and that God would not smite either of them for their presumption.

“Jubilate Deo, omnis terra,”
he sang with his brethren.
“Servite Domino in laetitia. Introite in conspectu euis in exsultatione …”
Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all ye lands. Serve the Lord with gladness. Come before His presence with singing …

The Abbey Church of the Paraclete was packed, both because of the archbishop's presence for the ordination and because several of today's priestly candidates were of highborn families in the area—as was Jorian, though most of his blood relatives were dead. That had been yet another factor in allowing Jorian to risk exposure as he did today, for no ecclesiastical or civil reprisals realistically could be visited on the dead—even Deryni dead. Numb foreboding accompanied Denis Arilan as he moved with the choir procession into the crowded church.

The altar blazed with candles. The candlesticks and altar plate gleamed. The familiar scents of beeswax and incense made Denis's senses soar with an old joy as he followed into his place in the right-hand section of choir stalls ranged to either side of the High Altar, hands joined piously before him.

“Bendicte, anima mea, Domino,”
the choir sang on, shifting to another psalm.
“Et omnia quae intra me sunt nomini sancto eius …”
Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless His holy name …

The archbishop's procession seemed to go on forever; nor did its composition bode well for any Deryni discovered today in deception. The archbishop was bad enough—the fire-breathing Oliver de Nore, Archbishop of Valoret and Primate of All Gwynedd, who was known to have burned Deryni in the south during his days as an itinerant bishop—and two of the priests accompanying him were also gaining a reputation for anti-Deryni zeal. The worst was a Father Gorony, the archbishop's chaplain, already responsible for the ferreting-out and eventual execution of several Deryni. Another was a priest of rising prominence named Darby, newly appointed pastor of nearby Saint Mark's parish, traditionally a stepping stone to a bishopric for favored sons of the Church. Every cleric in Gwynedd had heard of Alexander Darby, whose treatise on Deryni, written during his own seminary days at Grecotha, had become required reading for all aspiring clergy.

But this was no time for Denis to dwell on the foibles of the visitors of
Arx Fidei
. Today was Jorian's, walking third in the line of candle-bearing deacons following at the trail end of the procession led by Abbot Calbert. Despite whatever fears the young Deryni might have had about his impending fate, his plain, earnest face was suffused with guarded joy as he approached the sacrament for which he had spent his life preparing. Denis prayed again, as he had never prayed before, that Jorian might be spared; and for a time, it appeared his prayer would be answered.

No lightning smote Jorian de Courcy when he answered,
“Adsum”
at the calling of his name and came forward to kneel and hand over his candle to the archbishop with a reverent bow. His tongue did not cleave to his palate as he answered the ritual questions demanded of each candidate. Nor was he struck dead as hands were laid on his head in consecration and blessing, first by the archbishop and then by every other priest present, or when the sacred chrism was spread on his upraised palms.

When, vested in the white chasuble and stole of a priest at last, Jorian and the three other new priests gathered at the altar to concelebrate their first Mass with the archbishop, Denis began to believe they just might make it through without incident. But as Jorian, after receiving Communion from Archbishop de Nore, came forward with a ciborium to assist in administering to the school and congregation, the look of rapture on his face suddenly turned to one of surprise and then fear, and he stumbled.

“O sweet
Jesu
, help me!” Denis heard Jorian murmur, as the new-made priest blanched and staggered to his knees, catching his weight against the altar rail with one hand and nearly spilling the contents of the ciborium in his other.

Father Oriolt, one of the others ordained with Jorian, had the presence of mind to rescue the ciborium, but Archbishop de Nore was already moving purposefully toward the now-swaying Jorian, handing off his own ciborium to Father Gorony as Abbot Calbert also converged on the stricken priest.

“Jorian, are you ill?” Calbert asked, laying arms around Jorian's shoulders in support as de Nore and several others crowded nearer.

From where he knelt in choir, Denis could not hear Jorian's reply, or indeed any of the further exchange that passed between them, but there was no mistaking Jorian's distress, as he sank lower and lower to the floor, now almost hidden by anxious clerics. At de Nore's imperious signal, Gorony brought down the archbishop's own chalice from the altar, and Jorian was given to drink from it, but the draught did not seem to help. If anything, Jorian seemed worse.

And when de Nore himself retired to the sacristy with the abbot and a half-fainting Jorian, who had to be supported by Oriolt and Father Riordan, the Master of Novices, Denis knew something was dreadfully wrong. Could it be that God
had
struck down Jorian?

Denis did not want to believe that, but what other explanation could there be? Jorian was not a fainter. Nor had he been at all out of sorts earlier in the morning, while Denis helped him vest. And in Jorian's year as a deacon, essentially a junior priest-in-training, he certainly had assisted with Communion often enough for
that
not to have shaken his composure, solemn an office though it was.

The only other conclusion possible was that Jorian's collapse
did
have something to do with him being Deryni. God
had
struck him down, just as the legends said; and as Denis' turn came to go forward and receive Communion, he wondered whether God would strike
him
, too, for even being a party to Jorian's transgression.

But though the consecrated wafer Denis received from Father Gorony seemed drier than usual and stuck in his throat as he made his way back to his place, no divine wrath struck
him
. Nor, however, had he just been ordained a priest in defiance of Holy Church.

He worried about Jorian all through the rest of the Mass, aching to know what was going on. The archbishop soon came out of the sacristy with Oriolt and resumed administering Communion as if nothing had happened, but Father Darby went back to take his place; and it was Father Gorony who performed the Ablutions after Communion was over, while de Nore disappeared into the sacristy again for a little while.

Jorian did not come out to give his first blessings with the other new priests, either, and only members of the archbishop's staff were allowed in the sacristy after Mass was over. Nor did Jorian appear afterward at the celebratory feast in the refectory hall—though the archbishop came in about halfway though, still minus his chaplain and Father Darby.

Neither archbishop nor abbot had any announcement about Jorian at the feast, though they could not have been unaware how speculation was spreading among the guests and seminarians in the relaxed atmosphere permitted by suspension of the Rule of Silence on a feast day. Nor did anyone dare to ask. But when the school gathered for Vespers that evening, outside visitors no longer among their number, a tight-lipped and shaken-looking Abbot Calbert came into the pulpit after the service and called for their attention.

“My dear sons in Christ, it is my most painful duty to inform you concerning Jorian de Courcy,” he said, his tone and the omission of Jorian's new title conveying chill dread to the listening Denis. “I have not been unaware of your concern. I wish I could tell you that Jorian is well—or even that he is dead. Unfortunately, I can do neither. For Jorian de Courcy, unknown to us before today, has been found to be a Deryni spy in our midst.”

The disclosure was made dispassionately, with little inflection, but every man and boy in the church gasped. Denis, fighting down a panic that, unchecked, could have triggered a mindless and fatal bolt for escape, used his Deryni talents to force outward calm upon his body so that his reaction seemed no more than any of the others around him, but the clasped hands he raised to his lips in hurried prayer for Jorian were white­knuckled. As whispered reaction among the students shifted to louder speculation, Calbert held up a hand for silence, which was given immediately.