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  Childe Morgan

  ( Childe Morgan - 2 )

  Katherine Kurtz

  In bestseller Kurtz's morbid second tale of her new Deryni trilogy — following 2003's In the King's Service and set before the King Kelson novels — King Donal Haldane is mourning the loss of his bastard son, Krispin, a boy he thought would be companion and protector to Crown Prince Brion, and hoping that Alyce and Kenneth de Morgan's toddler son, Alaric, heir to Alyce's Deryni magic, can be groomed to take Krispin's place. Bishop Oliver de Nore's brother, Septimus, was put to death by the king after Alyce used her powers to reveal that he orchestrated Krispin's killing; now Oliver is doubly motivated to accelerate the church's campaign to exterminate the Deryni, who are feared by many humans in the land of Gwynedd. Kurtz renders even the most plot-twisting demises more dreary than dramatic, which makes for terrific medieval realism but uninteresting narrative.

  Katherine Kurtz

  «Childe Morgan»

  Prologue

  «A woman that had for a long time mourned the dead…»[1]

  Christmas Eve, 1093

  The fair-haired woman who paused in the doorway to the royal crypt was the Lady Alyce, Deryni heiress to the Duchy of Corwyn and now the wife of Sir Kenneth Morgan, and mother of his son. Fondly she watched as the black-cloaked Queen of Gwynedd touched a wax spill to the torch set in a cresset on a side wall, then used the spill to light a votive candle shielded in red glass.

  The child sleeping beneath the stone lid of the sepulcher on which she placed the votive light had been gone more than a year now, but Alyce knew that a day never passed when Richeldis of Gwynedd did not remember this, the second-born of her four sons, and mourn his loss. Blaine Emanuel Haldane had been only nine when he passed into the care of God’s holy angels.

  Nor did it much matter now just how or why Prince Blaine had met his premature death, though his bravery had saved his younger sister from drowning. Gallant though his action had been, the chill he took that day had been the death of him hardly a week later, wheezing for breath and finally succumbing to the illness that gradually filled his lungs with fluid and finally choked out his life. Though the royal physicians had done their best to save him, the boy’s condition had been beyond their skill, either to cure him or even much to ease his suffering. Only recently had his mother begun to smile again, and to emerge from the profound depression she had suffered following the young prince’s death.

  Breathing a heavy sigh, the queen sank to her knees to pray, head bowing over her hands, which were folded on Blaine’s tomb. Alyce knelt as well, quietly reaching behind her to pull a basket of greenery closer. Earlier, she and another of the queen’s ladies had helped gather cuttings of what sparse winter foliage the royal gardens had to offer, floral tributes intended not just for Prince Blaine but for several other notables buried here in the royal crypt, sleeping with Haldane princes and princesses.

  «Please bring the basket, Alyce», the queen said suddenly, getting to her feet and turning.

  Rising wordlessly, Alyce brought the basket closer so that Richeldis could select a single white camellia blossom, which she kissed and then laid on her son’s tomb beside the votive candle. She then added a sprig of winter holly, rich with berries, and a companion cutting of evergreen, tied with a ribbon of Haldane crimson.

  «Sleep gently, my son», the queen murmured, bending briefly to touch her lips to the cool marble.

  As she took the basket and moved on to lay tributes at several other Haldane graves, Alyce paid her own respects at another pair of tombs: the Lady Jessamy, wife of Sir Sief MacAthan, and Krispin her son — who also had been the son of the king, though Alyce doubted that Richeldis had ever learned of this. The plan had been that Krispin, heir to the magic of his Deryni mother and the similar magic of the Haldanes, should grow to be a Deryni protector to the king’s eldest son and heir, Prince Brion.

  But the Deryni were feared in most of Gwynedd, and hated by many, especially Gwynedd’s clergy. It had been such fear and hatred that had led to young Krispin’s murder, setting at naught all the king’s plans. One of those responsible had been a priest, the brother of a bishop, the guilt of all the murderers discovered and revealed by Alyce’s own magic. In all, three men had been executed.

  Now it was Alyce’s son who was being groomed to assume the role meant for the ill-fated Krispin: another child of a Deryni mother. Young Alaric had turned two in September, and Prince Brion was a mature twelve-and-a-half, but already the two were bonding like brothers — and might have been brothers in fact, if the king had had his way.

  But in this, at least, Donal Haldane had found himself thwarted before he could even attempt to carry out his intent. Alyce still found herself awed by the loyalty and love that had enabled her husband to forgive the king for what he had tried to do, and to pledge their child to the king’s service even before his birth, so that Prince Brion should have his Deryni protector.

  Never mind that the two-year-old Alaric would be in no position to do much protecting of anyone for some time. Fortunately, King Donal was yet hale and strong, and might expect to live many more years before his own son came to the throne. In the meantime, God willing, Alaric would be given the time to grow into his responsibilities, and be ready to take them up when the time came.

  «So many Haldanes», the queen said softly, intruding on Alyce’s reflections as she turned to look at the younger woman. «This is where they all lie, and where I shall lie, one day».

  «True enough, madam», Alyce replied lightly, «but, please God, not for many a year».

  Behind them, a rustling of fabric reminded Alyce of another waiting just at the doorway to the royal crypt: Zoë Morgan, her husband’s eldest daughter, beloved friend from Alyce’s schoolgirl days, briefly the wife of her late brother, but still and always her sister of the heart — and now, by dint of marriage with Zoë’s father, her stepdaughter as well.

  «Alyce, there’s a squire clearing his throat at the top of the stair», Zoë whispered, glancing over her shoulder as she moved nearer.

  «He’s expected», Alyce whispered back. «He’ll be here about the council meeting. Madam», she called, raising her voice slightly, «it’s time to go».

  «Good heavens, already?» Richeldis turned in surprise, looking younger than her twenty-eight years. «I will have time to change, won’t I? I can’t go to the council looking like a crow, in all this black!»

  Smiling, Zoë moved a little nearer, lifting a beckoning arm. «We have time, if you come now, madam. I believe it’s Jamyl who’s come to remind us. He knows to bring the summons just that bit earlier than he’d need to do».

  «Clever Jamyl», Richeldis said with a low chuckle. «He is precisely the kind of squire I like. He must have sisters and lots of other female relatives. Now, if I could only persuade the king to give me earlier reminders when I’m dressing for a state occasion. He does hate it when I’m late».

  So saying, she passed a final, wistful caress along the top of her dead son’s tomb, then gathered her skirts to pass Alyce and follow Zoë up the stairs, where a mounted escort and a carriage waited at the foot of the cathedral steps to take them back up to the castle.

  Chapter 1

  «For I was my father’s son, tender and only beloved in the sight of my mother».[2]

  Several weeks later, on a bitter cold morning early in January of the new year, a solitary figure in a heavy cloak and hood emerged from a side door of that same cathedral and made his way into the cemetery beyond.

  An icy sleet was knifing the air on this Feast of the Epiphany, also called Twelfth Night, unlike that other, unspeakable Twelfth Night now four years past. Then, heavy snow had cast its pall over Gwynedd, the city of Rhemuth, and the bleak burial gro
und adjoining the cathedral, where Bishop Oliver de Nore now huddled in the lee of the apse and gazed unseeing at his brother’s grave.

  «Why, Sepp?» the bishop whispered to the rain, tugging his oiled leather hood farther onto his head.

  In the intervening years, he had learned far too much of his brother’s ignoble death — and imagination embellished such details as others had dared to tell him: how, on the word of a Deryni sorceress, the king had condemned Father Septimus de Nore as an accessory to murder and ordered him flogged and thrown headfirst down a well in the royal stable yard.

  The doomed man had not gone easily to his fate. Eyewitnesses said he had screamed as they let him fall, scrabbling frantically at the slimy sides of the well-shaft and abrading hands, elbows, and knees nearly to the bone, but finally had drowned. The monks who took charge of his frozen body afterward, giving him decent burial here in the cathedral grounds, had offered what reassurance they could, that the bishop’s brother had not suffered long; but raw imaginings of Sepp’s final moments were an all-too-regular feature of Oliver’s nightmares.

  With a shudder and a shake of his head, the bishop turned his face from his brother’s grave, swallowing down the sour bile that rose in his throat. Though he very much doubted that Sepp had taken an active part in any murder, it probably was true that he had turned a blind eye to the victim’s fate — and had Septimus de Nore not been a priest, the sentence meted out to him might have been fitting punishment for one who had countenanced the heartless murder of a child.

  But not just any child. The boy had been Deryni — which, so far as Oliver was concerned, all but justified Sepp’s actions. Some there were who had come to accept the presence of Deryni in Gwynedd, secretly and not so secretly, allowing them to coexist among decent humans, but Oliver was not one of them. The king, however…

  Jaws clenching in disapproval, Oliver glanced up at the dark silhouette of Rhemuth Castle looming against the sky beyond the cathedral. Despite civil and canon law that seriously curtailed the rights of Deryni in Gwynedd, Donal Haldane was known to turn a blind eye to the letter of the law when it suited him, and had kept more than one Deryni in his employ and even in his friendship during his long reign. Some even whispered that the dead boy had been Donal’s bastard son, gotten on the Deryni wife of one of his former ministers of state who, rather conveniently, had died very soon after the boy’s birth. Since both mother and son were now dead as well, it served no useful purpose to dwell on that, but it could explain why the king had dealt so severely with those responsible for the boy’s death.

  Not that many would dispute the sentence meted out to Sepp’s two lay accomplices, who probably had been the instigators. The king had ordered them gelded and then hanged, for they had buggered the boy quite viciously before throwing him into the well to drown. And Sepp, because it had been his suggestion thus to dispose of the evidence of the others’ crime, had been stripped and flogged for his betrayal of the boy’s trust, then flung down the selfsame well as the victim, to share the fate he himself had decreed.

  There it might have ended, had Sepp been a layman like the others. But as a priest, Father Septimus de Nore had been entitled to benefit of clergy — which meant that his part in the matter ought to have been heard in the archbishop’s court, not the king’s — and that, Oliver could not forgive. Nor could he forgive the woman who had uncovered his brother’s guilt: a Deryni, and therefore to be despised. Though both she and the king had been swiftly and justly declared excommunicate for their part in the trial and execution of a priest by secular authority, both had been reinstated in the good graces of the Church with unseemly haste.

  Oliver had witnessed the first such reconciliation — achieved by the threat of Interdict for the entire kingdom, if the king did not capitulate. Oliver had been present on that Maundy night when the king made his formal act of submission before the archbishop: the ritual declaration of contrition and acceptance of the penitential scourging that preceded the lifting of his excommunication. Some variation on this eventual outcome had always been a foregone conclusion, since a king dared not long remain adamant in his defiance of ecclesiastical prerogatives.

  Less appropriately, the now-deceased archbishop had also been persuaded to lift the excommunication of the Deryni woman, but a few weeks later — and she had since been wed to one of the king’s loyal supporters, and borne him a son.

  «Staring at his grave won’t bring him back, you know», said a low voice behind Oliver. «You do this every year, my lord».

  Grimacing against the rain, Bishop Oliver turned to cast a sour glance at Father Rodder Gillespie, his secretary and general factotum. Cassock-clad and huddled, like the bishop, in a fur-lined cloak with oiled hood and shoulder capelet, the younger man looked as miserable as Oliver felt, bedraggled and chilled to the bone.

  «I do it, dear Rodder, because my brother lies still in his grave and unavenged», the bishop said bitterly, «and because those responsible for his death still prosper. The king has many fine, strapping sons, and the woman who denounced my brother will have her son presented at court later today. I was praying for justice».

  «And I have been praying for your good health, as you stand in the rain like a child of no good sense!» Rodder retorted, laying a proprietary arm around his superior’s shoulders and drawing him toward the open doorway of the passage that led away from the abbey churchyard. «Please, my lord. You must come inside and don dry clothes. The archbishop will be wanting to leave soon for court. He has already been asking for you».

  Oliver cast a last, longing glance at his brother’s grave, grimly signed himself with the Cross, then let himself be led inside.

  Chapter 2

  «He shall serve among great men, and appear before princes; he will travel through strange countries; for he hath tried the good and the evil among men».[3]

  «Alaric Anthony Morgan, if you don’t stop squirming and let Auntie Zoë put your shoes on, I shall tell your father!»

  Lady Alyce de Corwyn Morgan turned from her mirror to cast an exasperated glance at her firstborn, both hands occupied with holding hanks of golden hair in place while a maid arranged her coiffure. Auntie Zoë, actually the child’s half-sister, did her best to keep a straight face as the wayward toddler glanced guiltily from his mother’s face to hers to the offending shoes, lower lip starting to tremble.

  «Don’t want those!» he declared, hugging two disreputable-looking bits of scuffed suede against the front of a once-clean shirt. «Want these!»

  «Absolutely not!» Zoë said emphatically, plucking the offending shoes from his grasp and tossing them behind her as she held up a newer green one. «Those are nearly worn through and outgrown — and they’d look utterly shabby with your lovely new tunic», she added, indicating the small black tunic laid out on the chest beside him. Embroidered over the left breast was a green Corwyn gryphon, its details picked out in gold. A border of fleury-counter-fleury in metallic gold embellished it at throat, sleeve-edge, and hem.

  «No!» said Alaric. «Don’t like the green ones!»

  «Alaric, love», said Zoë, «we don’t have time for this today. You know Papa will be very cross if you make him late for court. The green shoes are lovely and soft…»

  «No!»

  «Here now, what’s this about green shoes?» asked a pleasant male voice from the doorway behind them, as Zoë’s father — and the boy’s — came into the room, accompanied by the youngest of his three daughters, the flaxen-haired Alazais.

  Though less colorfully dressed than the women, Sir Kenneth Morgan had also donned formal court attire for the occasion: an ankle-length robe of nubby turquoise wool, its high neck and sleeves lined with silver fox, cinched at the waist with the white belt of his knighthood. Alazais wore a rich brown damask, in contrast to Zoë’s gown of heavy rose silk. Alyce, as the heiress of Corwyn, had chosen deep forest green to complement the Furstána emeralds at her throat. All of them sported varying shades of blond hair, though Kenneth’s had
gone more toward silver than sandy in the past several years.

  «He doesn’t like the green shoes», Alyce said, half-turning toward the newcomers as she set a narrow silver fillet atop the fine veil her maid had just pinned in place. «He wants to wear those manky old tan ones that even the dogs ignore».

  «Does he, indeed?» Kenneth asked, crouching between his son and his eldest daughter and taking up one of the green shoes. «Alaric, is that true? Why, these are very fine shoes. I like them far better than mine».

  The boy’s rebellion shifted to curiosity, and he leaned forward to peer down at the pointed toe of one turquoise shoe protruding from beneath the hem of his sire’s robe.

  «I really do prefer yours», Kenneth said, noting the boy’s interest. «Not that your shoes would fit me — and even if they did, the color would hardly suit this robe. Frankly, I’d far rather be wearing my comfortable old black ones.

  «But sometimes, we have to do what someone else wants. Your mother likes these better, and tells me they are much more suitable for an important court like Twelfth Night. The queen will like them, too — and your mother and Zoë and the other ladies of the court», he added. «Women set great store by such things, you know».

  The stream of adult patter utterly charmed away the boy’s remaining resistance, so that he made no objection as Kenneth got to his feet and picked him up, holding him close to breathe of the fresh scent of his silver-gilt hair and kiss his cheek. As he braced the boy on his hip, he silently nodded for Zoë to resume shoeing the child.

  «My lord, you are entirely too indulgent», Alyce murmured, though she smiled as she said it, and blew him a kiss.

  «Well, he is my only son», Kenneth replied. «And I’m afraid I indulged my daughters, too», he added, with a fond glance at Zoë and Alazais, both of whom obviously adored both their father and their younger half-brother. «It doesn’t seem to have hurt them».