Camber of Culdi Page 18

  “We’d best get back before we’re missed. Will you pray for us, Father?”

  Cullen, taken by surprise at the request, automatically put his hand in Camber’s and clasped it in farewell. “If you truly wish it, my lord,” he said, as he realized what he had done. “Though, frankly, I had not thought to hear such a plea from your lips.”

  “Because of our past differences? I think we both, perhaps, misread the other badly. God keep you, Father.”

  And as Camber, with his daughter, turned and stepped back across the Portal threshold, he heard Cullen murmur, “And you, my son.”

  Then they were back in his study at Caerrorie, and the newly widowed Elinor was rushing toward him to fling herself into his arms.

  “Thank God, you’ve returned,” she whispered, hugging him close for comfort. “The king’s lieutenant wants to see you. I’ve been stalling him for nearly five minutes.”

  “Did he say why he wants to see me?” Camber asked, stepping from the Portal and beginning to strip off his outer garments.

  “It’s snowing harder. He wants to move his men into the hall. I have the distinct impression that they plan to stay longer than just overnight.”

  “That’s splendid,” Camber answered, his tone indicating that he did not think it splendid at all. “Where will I find this lieutenant?”

  Five minutes later, he was entering the Great Hall, where the lieutenant was waiting, having paused to don a nightrobe and to clear his mind of his recent activities. (After all, the man was a Deryni.)

  The lieutenant was pacing the floor before the hearth, rustling the sweet rushes and disturbing the sleep of the hounds sprawled by the fire. Several of his men were gathered silently at the other end of the hall, muffled in great cloaks. Camber took in the scene at a glance as he emerged from the stairwell, then crossed to the hearth. The dogs raised their heads to greet him, but he stilled their motion with a firm hand signal.

  “I’m sorry you had to wait, Lieutenant,” he said quietly, drawing his robe around him against the cold. “It is my custom to meditate before retiring, especially in times of stress. I’m afraid I have trained my daughters too well that I am not to be disturbed.”

  “I understand, my Lord Earl.” The lieutenant bowed. “I came to ask whether I might move my men into the hall for the night. It’s beginning to snow harder. I think we’re in for a storm.”

  “Certainly, sir, though I hope you will not overstay your welcome,” Camber said softly. “I’m afraid I haven’t the means to house an entire garrison indefinitely.”

  “Well, I hardly think a score of men constitutes a garrison, my lord—” the man started to protest.

  “No, but it is a reasonable substitute at a time like this. And I did not hear you clarify my ‘indefinitely,’ either. Just how long do you intend to stay?”

  The lieutenant looked down in embarrassment. “I’m sorry, my lord. I dislike being here at such a time just as much as you dislike having me here. But I am commanded to remain until I receive further orders. You are acquainted with soldiers, sir, though you were not one yourself. I’m sure you will understand—”

  “I understand your orders, sir. I am not that far removed from military matters after twenty-five years at Court. What I do not understand is the reason for those orders. Am I and my household under arrest?”

  “Of course not,” the lieutenant said uncomfortably. “We were sent to escort your son’s body home in honor, and, I assume, to render you that same honor until it has been determined just what really happened to your son.”

  “Then, you acknowledge that he did not merely collapse and die, as your instructions first gave you to say?”

  “I—er—I am not permitted to discuss that, my lord. I’m sorry.”

  His voice trailed off, very uncomfortably, and Camber smiled, with a gentle, resigned lifting of one corner of his mouth.

  “I suspected as much. You are not to blame,” he said. “Please feel free to billet your men here in the hall, by all means. I will have the steward see to building up the fire.”

  As the man bowed thanks, Camber turned and made his way down the hall, nodding civilly to the soldiers as he passed. One of them, who stood apart and made an especially respectful bow, seemed strangely familiar. When Camber had instructed the steward about the fire, he paused thoughtfully in the shadows at the end of the hall, studying the young man’s back. Almost immediately, the man turned and peered in his direction, then glanced casually at his fellows and began to walk slowly toward him. Camber retreated farther into the shadows, to an alcove hidden from the rest of the hall, and waited. The man joined him almost immediately.

  “Do I know you, sir?” Camber said, his eyes searching the young man’s face.

  “Guaire of Arliss, Lord Camber,” the young man murmured, going down on one knee. “Your son and I were friends at Court. You probably don’t remember me.”

  “But I do!” Camber replied, taking Guaire’s hand and raising him to his feet. “Cathan spoke of you often, and affectionately. But”—he glanced toward the hall—“what brings you here with the likes of them? I thought you were aide to one of the military earls?”

  “I was. To Earl Maldred,” Guaire nodded. “Only he’s dead, killed by an assassin three days ago. That’s part of what I came to tell you about. There’s something—”

  He broke off as Camber glanced beyond him and held a finger to his lips, then led him into a small storage room near the kitchens, away from the growing noise of the hall as the king’s men made their camp.

  “Are you Der—No, I can see that you are not of us,” Camber murmured, taking Guaire urgently by the shoulders. “Young friend, we daren’t take much more time. Did you ever link minds with Cathan? Were you and he that close?”

  Wordlessly, Guaire nodded, his brown eyes wide.

  “Would you be willing to share that bond with me, Guaire?” Camber continued. “I would not ask it if I did not feel it needful.”

  As Guaire nodded a second time, Camber moved his hands to either side of Guaire’s head and closed his own eyes, thumbs resting lightly on the other’s temples.

  “Then, do it now. Open your mind to me without delay. For Cathan’s sake, I beg it.”

  There was a breathless pause, a lengthening time of stillness, and then Camber was opening his eyes and pulling the younger man into close embrace, staring sightlessly over the other’s shoulder as he analyzed what he had seen. Then he put Guaire at arm’s length and looked into his eyes. If he had lost a son, he had gained a worthy friend—though one more human, he could never hope to find.

  And now he knew, too, that he was doing what had to be done. There was no proof yet that the king had killed; but there was little doubt in Guaire’s own mind that Imre was, in some way, responsible—or that Cathan’s own kinsman, Coel Howell, had had a heavy hand in what happened at Valoret.

  Camber smiled and clasped Guaire’s shoulders reassuringly, then glanced out of the storage room to see if the way was clear.

  “You’d best get back. I’ll wait until you’ve gone.”

  “Aye, sir. I’ll bring you word when other orders arrive. They’ll not take you by surprise.”

  “God bless you, son,” Camber murmured, as the young man slipped back into the passageway and out of sight.

  Camber waited for several minutes, composing himself to traverse the hall again, to be certain he would give no inkling of what he had just learned. Then he left the tiny chamber and made his way back through the hall, nodding distractedly to the men as they stood at his passage, some of them saluting him courteously. The dogs stirred as he came near the fireplace, but he stayed them with his hand as he continued on. He did not see Guaire in the hall, but a very young soldier stood and bowed as he approached the foot of the newel staircase.

  “Thank you for allowing us inside, m’lord,” the young man said, tugging at his forelock. “’Tis no fit night for man nor beast to be outside.”

  Camber glanced up at the high w
indows, saw them rattling under the attack of the storm, and nodded acknowledgment as he stepped past the man. And as he made his way up the stairs to his chambers, he thought about his son and son-to-be, riding the road to a distant abbey in the storm; and of the other son, whom he would never see again except in dreams, who slept outside beneath the storm’s reach, in the growing cold of an early grave.

  He did not sleep until very late.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  For your hands are defiled with blood.

  —Isaiah 59:3

  The next two days were spent, for the most part, in uneasy seclusion, awaiting further royal reaction which did not come. Receiving no new orders to the contrary, the king’s men stayed on, trying to intrude as little as possible on the MacRories’ grief, but they were forced by the worsening weather to remain close in the hall. Camber was a gracious host under the circumstances, going out of his way to see that the men’s physical needs were provided, but relations grew strained as the days wore on. He spoke once more with Guaire, on the second day, when the waiting had grown almost intolerable, but their meeting was short, and nearly interrupted by Guaire’s lieutenant. Besides, the young lord had nothing to add beyond what he had already made known to Camber. Further evidence of familiarity could only breed suspicion where there was none as yet.

  The residents of Caerrorie were careful not to engender such suspicion, either. Below stairs, nothing occurred which was not in keeping with the expected behavior in a household recently bereft of its eldest son. Life went on, but in a subdued fashion. The growing tension in those who waited did not manifest itself within the sight of the royal guards.

  But above stairs, where the guards were not invited, preparations continued at near-fever pitch. Camber and Evaine spent hours gathering and transporting the few belongings they deemed essential for their impending exile, and briefing the others—Elinor, James—on the method, if not the precise reason, for their escape. Wulpher/Joram and Crinan/Rhys remained in their chambers except for meals and family devotions, engaged, as Camber explained to the guard lieutenant, in prayer and meditation for the soul of, their departed brother. In point of fact, both spent the greater part of their time in dreamless Deryni trance, both to keep them safely out of sight and possible discovery, and to conserve their strength. Camber’s spell had never been intended to last so long, and had to be reinforced periodically.

  And elsewhere, others made preparations and played their various waiting games.

  In the haven, the Brothers of Saint Michael completed the last of their provisioning for the long winter exile ahead, dispersing the noncombatant brethren and arranging for the safe billeting of the militant arm of the order.

  At Dhassa, four Michaeline knights set up a watch to be certain that three very important riders would reach safety without mishap.

  In Valoret, a tense Deryni conspirator, unwittingly playing both sides of a desperate game, perused five reconstructed pages from a parish register and sent out his agents to learn more about the only three names on those pages which appeared to be connected: members of a family named Draper—Daniel and Royston and Nicholas. And so the time passed.…

  But if the days were taut for MacRories and Michaelines and a wayward Deryni lord, they were as nothing beside the misery of their king and liege lord, Imre. Grief stalked the towers of the royal apartments like an uninvited specter, wept and raged and hoarded vengeful thoughts in the keep of the House of Festil.

  The king, his senses no longer dulled to gray oblivion by the balm of too much wine, spent the day of Cathan’s funeral thrashing in sweat-soaked delirium, the fire in his brain assuaged but little by the tender ministrations of his sister. Sick with the aftereffects of wrung emotions, as well as the spirits he had consumed, unable to draw the strength to quell his pain arcanely, too proud to ask another’s aid to ease the ache which lay upon him like a stifling mantle, he brooded in the sunless rooms and bore his suffering with an ever-sharper temper, terrorizing the servants until they feared to venture past the outer threshold.

  Only Ariella seemed to understand, as she had always comprehended, from his youngest childhood days. And that, too, plagued him: the dimly recalled memory of her body next to his; their passion; a quirk of conscience urging condemnation while another, more fleshly part of him still yearned for her again.

  In the end, he succumbed—though that, too, brought him little comfort for the rending in his soul. For two full days he kept his morbid isolation within his sister’s chambers, seeing no one but her, taking little food, sleeping less, and indulging in hysterical fits of weeping rage at fate, at Maldred and Rannulf for letting themselves be slain, at Cathan for his betrayal, at Coel for telling him about it and compelling him to act, and at God, who had somehow conspired to make a shambles of Imre’s world.

  It was with full knowledge of this indulgence in kingly self-pity that Coel Howell dared to approach the royal apartments on the afternoon of the second day—with that knowledge, and armed with protection in the form of a handful of new parchment scrolls obtained but lately from his scribes.

  He was received in Ariella’s presence chamber, where the king sat in fur-lined robes before a roaring fire. Imre was strained and nervous—one had only to watch the tremor in his hands to ascertain that—but his mental faculties had not been impaired, and he listened to Coel’s findings with great attention. Ariella sat on a cushioned stool at his side, her hand resting negligently on his shoulder, her darting eyes missing no nuance. When Coel had finished, Imre perused the scrolls superficially, then handed them to his sister.

  “Birth records of a father and son,” he said, furrowing his brow. “Why the interest in them, and why now?”

  Coel frowned. “I don’t know, Sire. The father, Royston, has been dead for more than twenty years. But his father, Daniel, died only a few months ago. In fact, Rhys Thuryn was his physician—which makes me wonder why he and MacRorie stole the records. I can only surmise that it was because of something the old man said on his deathbed.”

  “How about the son, this Nicholas? Does he still live?” Imre asked.

  “Unknown, Sire. If he is still alive, he did not follow the profession of his father or grandfather—at least not in this city. He seems to have disappeared shortly after his father’s death. It’s possible that he died of the plague as well.”

  Ariella coughed and turned her attention entirely on Coel. “This Daniel Draper, who died recently—who was he?”

  “A merchant in woolens, Your Highness. He apparently did moderately well in his trade, paid his debts, and left his goods and business to his apprentice, one Jason Brown—which would seem to indicate that his grandson was either estranged or dead. Other than that, no one seems to know much about him. He was in his eighties, after all. Most of his contemporaries died long ago.”

  “His contemporaries,” Imre repeated. “I wonder …”

  “Beg pardon, Sire?”

  “His contemporaries …” Imre said again. “If he was as old as you claim, he was probably alive in my great-great-grandfather’s time. He may even have lived through the Coup.”

  “Do you see a connection?” Ariella asked.

  “Probably not. Still—”

  Imre cocked his head to one side and then rose thoughtfully to begin pacing slowly back and forth across the room. Ariella watched him curiously, a little possessively. Coel wondered what Imre was driving at.

  “Alive at the time of the Coup,” Imre murmured, thinking out loud. “And Thuryn and MacRorie have stolen the birth records of his son and grandson. Coel, what does this suggest to you?—the theft of the records, I mean:”

  “That they … were trying to establish a line of legitimate descent?” Coel ventured.

  “Correct.” Imre nodded, picking up a stylus from the table and gesturing to make his point. “But for whom? A family of woolen merchants? We’re missing something here. There’s something we’re overlooking. But what?”

  “What about the books, Imr
e?” Ariella said, after a long pause, obviously thinking in tandem with her brother now. “Coel, did you not say that Thuryn had consulted certain volumes in the royal archives?”

  “Yes, Highness.”

  “That’s right.” Imre stopped his pacing. “Coel, what volumes were they? From what time?”

  Sensing the direction Imre’s thoughts were taking, Coel consulted his notes, then looked up in fascination. “From the time of the Coup, Sire.”

  “And why,” Imre whispered to the room at large, “why would Thuryn be interested in such books, when his accomplice has stolen records to prove the legitimate descent of a man possibly living now, unless they hoped somehow to forge a link with the past?” He whirled to point the stylus at Coel like a weapon. “What link were they trying to form? Who was this mysterious Daniel Draper before he became a merchant in woolen cloth?”

  “I—don’t know,” Coel stammered, uncertainty hampering his speech.

  “But one can guess,” Ariella stated, her voice edged with steel. “They plot against you, Imre. They seek to establish a link with the past, with the old regime, perhaps with the Haldane line itself! It would be fascinating to learn whether any pages were removed from the volumes Thuryn used. And if there are, and they deal with the old nobility—” She bared her teeth in a predatory smile. “Then I think we have certain evidence of a MacRorie conspiracy.”

  Coel, thunderstruck at the turn of logic she had taken, bowed deeply as his mind raced to catch up with all the implications. If Ariella’s reasoning was sound, then Cathan MacRorie undoubtedly had been involved in his brother’s treachery, and Coel’s position was considerably reinforced. He allowed himself a slight smile as he straightened from his bow.

  “I will investigate the possibility, Your Highness. In the meantime, all of the MacRories are under surveillance at Camber’s seat at Caerrorie, where they gathered for Cathan’s funeral. Do you wish Thuryn and Joram MacRorie brought in for interrogation?”