The King’s Justice Page 19

  “I think it’s all right. It’s a bit stiff from not being able to bend all afternoon, but a little walking should take care of that. Ciard, can you fix the thing before morning?”

  As Ciard grunted assent and wandered off with the damaged greave, Dhugal removed its mate and stood, grinning wanly as he hobbled over to his father, favoring the suspect knee.

  “I feel really stupid, getting clipped like that,” he said, as Duncan set aside his cup and bent to run both hands over the stiff joint. “Can you sense anything through the trews?”

  “Just give me a moment,” Duncan murmured, extending his Deryni senses through the leather to the knee. He surrounded the joint with healing warmth for several seconds to increase the circulation, feeling Dhugal’s mind reach out in fond caress and returning the affection, then permitted himself a relieved sigh as he straightened and glanced up at his son.

  “Nothing serious,” he said, “though I might not be able to say the same if you hadn’t been wearing that steel. I suppose it’s days like this that justify the heavier armor, despite the heat.”

  Dhugal flexed his knee again, smiling at the improved mobility, and pulled his stool closer to sit beside his father. He had a grime-streaked towel draped around his neck, and he used one end to wipe his sweaty face yet again. Duncan, when he noticed the condition of the towel, offered him a cleaner one that had been lying across his own shoulder.

  “What do you think is going to happen next?” Dhugal asked softly, when he had unbuckled the front of his brigandine to mop at his neck and fan a breeze into his soggy undertunic.

  Duncan shook his head, retrieving his cup to sip at it again. “I wish I knew. Have some water?”

  Grinning, Dhugal took the cup and poured the contents over his head, basking in the cool as the water sluiced over his hair and into his armor. Duncan only chuckled and took the cup back as Dhugal toweled off again, refilling it from a pewter ewer at his feet.

  “Waste of good water,” he muttered, as Dhugal sighed and slumped contentedly on his stool. “Doesn’t it get rather soggy in there?”

  “No soggier than it was from my own sweat,” Dhugal retorted with another grin. “You should try it.”

  “Hmmm, thank you, no.”

  “If we can’t get out of our armor tonight, it’s better than nothing,” Dhugal ventured.

  Duncan chuckled and shook his head. “Dhugal, do you know how much I despise being filthy? It isn’t so bad during the day, but not to be able to get clean at night—uck!”

  “And you call yourself a borderman!”

  “I do not call myself a borderman; I happen to be chief of a border clan, but I am a duke, and a son of a duke, and a prince of the Church, thank you very much,” Duncan said in mock indignation. “And neither dukes nor sons of dukes nor princes of any sort whatever should have to put up with being grimy after a long day of fighting for their king.” He grinned. “On the other hand, complaining about it does provide diversion after such a day, doesn’t it?” His manner sobered abruptly. “Sweet Jesu, I wish I knew where Sicard’s army was! I’d give a great deal to face an enemy that would stand and fight.”

  “I know,” Dhugal said bleakly, propping his elbows on his knees and resting his chin on his hands. “It’s getting to be more than just annoying, isn’t it? Do you think we should try to contact Morgan? Maybe he and Kelson have got Sicard occupied, down in the south.”

  “You know they haven’t. Anyway, I’m too tired to try a contact tonight.” He yawned and stretched as he stood. “Besides that, they won’t be expecting contact for another three days. Are you about ready to see what Jodrell has managed to scare up for supper? I don’t know about you, but I’m famished.”

  “I suppose. Only—”

  “Only, what?” Duncan asked, setting his fists on his hips to peer at his son as Dhugal also stood.

  “Well, I was just wondering what you would do if we had to contact Morgan, and he wasn’t expecting us.”

  “Hmmm, considerably more difficult than a planned contact,” Duncan murmured, glancing around to be certain they were not overheard. “However, if it had to be done, I’d wait until it was very late, when I was sure he’d be asleep. He’d be more receptive asleep. We’d probably get through.” He cocked his head in question. “Does that answer your question?”

  “I suppose,” Dhugal murmured. “There isn’t much point to it just now anyway, is there? We know who’s been giving us fits for the past two weeks: Loris and Gorony.”

  “That’s right,” Duncan agreed. “And when we catch up with them, I intend to thrash them both for every bath I haven’t had during this campaign. Now, come on and let’s find supper. It’s bad enough to have to sleep in our armor. I’m damned if I’ll do it on an empty stomach!”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Now a thing was secretly brought to me, and mine ear received a little thereof.

  —Job 4:12

  “Angelus consilii natus est de virgine, sol de stella,” Richenda quoted, sitting at her loom the next morning as she and Rothana capped verses back and forth between them. “The angel of counsel is born of a virgin, the sun from a star. Sol occasum nesciens, a sun that knows no setting, a star that is always shining, always bright.”

  Rothana, following the text from a scroll in her lap, rocked back and forth with delight.

  “Yes, yes! I know that one. Sicut sidus radium, profert virgo filium, pari forma. As a star puts forth its ray, so the virgin puts forth her son, in like manner.…”

  They were alone in the ladies’ solar. Rothana was perched cross-legged in the shade of a window seat, pale blue habit tucked demurely around her knees and bare feet. Here in the privacy of the women’s quarters, she had taken off her veil, and the heavy braid of her hair gleamed blue-black over one shoulder, the end brushing the manuscript unrolled across her knees. Her fingers fluttered in emphasis like the wings of the doves that nested in the eaves above the window, her face lighting dreamily with the rapture of the ancient verses.

  “Neque sidus radio, neque mater filio fit corrupta. The star does not lose virtue by giving forth its ray, or the mother by bearing a son.”

  There had been a time when Richenda, too, had felt that adolescent rapture. Now the words brought a deeper enjoyment, tempered with the wisdom and experience of nearly twice Rothana’s years. The half-decade of marriage to Bran Coris had been a resigned suspension of the scholar’s life Richenda had enjoyed as a young girl, for Bran had not thought it seemly that a woman should be too learned. That life had been revived with Bran’s death, not only tolerated but actively encouraged by Alaric, and fed by Duncan’s and Kelson’s even more avid interest in the things she found to share with all of them. It was Duncan who had managed to locate the scroll Rothana now held, though it had been Alaric who paid the exorbitant sum the scroll had cost.

  “I remember a related text from Ecclesiasticus,” Rothana was saying, running an eager finger down the columns of fine-penned script. “‘I am the mother of fair love, of fear, and knowledge, and holy hope.… My memorial is sweeter than honey, and mine inheritance than the honeycomb.’”

  Richenda smiled encouragement and made a sound of concurrence, but her shuttle never missed its rhythm as Rothana resumed reading.

  The solar was warm already, though it was only just past Terce, the “Third Hour” of the ancient world, when the Holy Spirit came down upon the Apostles. It would be warmer still, before the evening brought relief. Longing for the blessed cool of the lakes of her mother’s Andelon, or even the brisk sea breezes that swept into Coroth, Richenda paused in her weaving to readjust a pin in her coiled, flame-gold hair; like Rothana, she had shed her veil on returning from early Mass. Her gown this morning was a soft rose rather than the blue she usually favored, out of deference to the azure habits of Rothana and her sisters. The shade suited her, but it played up the high color in her cheeks that the heat brought out, and drained off the fire from her bright tresses.

  The heat would be even worse
in Meara, Richenda reflected, as her fingers resumed their patient, steady rhythm, casting the carved bone shuttle back and forth hypnotically across the pattern she was working.

  But no sense worrying about Alaric; that would do neither him nor her any good whatsoever. And the poetry Rothana recited was pleasant, the cadence only reinforcing the easy spell she wove into her threads. She found herself slipping into a light, pleasant trance as the words dropped into the morning stillness like polished pebbles into a shaded pool, and she was glad they had come here early, before any of the other women thought to join them.

  “‘Hail, Queen of heaven; Hail, Lady of the Angels,’” Rothana went on. “‘Salutation to thee, root and portal, whence the light of the world has arisen.’”

  A tangle in the thread required Richenda’s closer attention, and as she bent closer to her canvas to work it free, a part of her mind continuing to follow the spell Rothana was weaving with her poetry, she suddenly became aware that someone else had entered the room and stood now behind the carved screens set before the entryway, listening—and that the someone was Deryni, shields tight and unreadable.

  Glancing curiously over her shoulder—for the interloper must be one of only two royal ladies, to enter without knocking here, in the women’s quarters—she caught a glimpse of white through the screens that confirmed her suspicions: Jehana, obviously not recognizing Richenda from behind, in rose rather than blue. If the queen chose to come closer, this might prove most interesting.

  Don’t stop, she sent to Rothana, as the younger woman, too, became aware of their visitor, though not her identity.

  Rothana continued with hardly a break in her rhythm, only shifting the scroll a little on her lap. Richenda bent more intently to her canvas and kept her face averted as Jehana came around the edge of the screens.

  “I beg your pardon,” Jehana said softly, as Rothana looked up and stopped reading. “I was drawn by your beautiful poetry, and I—are you one of the sisters who recently arrived? You’re very young.”

  “And out of habit, I fear, my lady,” Rothana said, smiling sheepishly as she picked up her veil and rose to make the queen a polite curtsey. “It’s very warm, and as a novice, my sisters often overlook my childish lapses.”

  “Nay, it is warm, child. I shan’t tell on you,” Jehana said with an answering smile, only then glancing at and recognizing Richenda, who had also risen at her approach.

  “You!” she whispered, after a little gasp.

  Richenda inclined her head in acknowledgment and dipped in dutiful curtsey.

  “Majesty.”

  “Majesty?” Rothana echoed, cocking her head at Richenda in question.

  “Jehana of Bremagne, mother to the king,” Richenda said softly, not taking her eyes from the queen. “Your Majesty, may I be permitted to present my kinswoman Rothana, daughter of Hakim, Emir Nur Hallaj, a novice of Saint Brigid’s.”

  As the speechless Jehana darted her gaze from Richenda to the startled-looking Rothana, who was replacing her veil with all possible speed, Richenda lifted a hand in invitation for the queen to join Rothana in the window seat. The queen would refuse, of course, but Richenda found herself taking an almost perverse pleasure to be making the offer.

  “Please join us if you wish, Majesty,” she said. “Perhaps you would care to hear more poetry. Interspersed with more traditional material, Rothana was reciting from the works of the great Orin. He was Deryni, like the three of us.”

  Jehana swallowed audibly and went nearly as pale as her white robes, looking as if she might bolt at any instant, green eyes darting fearfully to the silent Rothana and then back to Richenda.

  “But, she’s a nun!” she whispered, shaking her head in denial. “She can’t be D-D—She simply can’t be! Not and be in religion.…”

  Richenda had all she could do to keep her anger from flaring visibly. “Why not? That’s what you wish to be, isn’t it? What makes you think you’re the only one?”

  “That’s an entirely different matter,” Jehana said weakly. “You know it is. I turned to the Church to help me cast out my evil; you celebrate yours!”

  “Nay, madame! We celebrate our closer kinship with the Creator,” Rothana answered. “You yourself commended Orin’s verses—”

  “Deryni verses!” Jehana snapped.

  “Verses that were perfectly acceptable before you knew their author,” Richenda countered. “Do you fear to be contaminated simply by listening, madame? I assure you, if it were possible to win acceptance of our race by the mere speaking of Deryni poetry, then all the hilltops of this land should resound to Orin’s verses! Alas, for those of us who must endlessly continue trying to prove ourselves pious and upright servants of the same God you serve, things are not that easy.”

  “You speak blasphemy! I will not listen!” Jehana murmured, shutting her eyes tight and turning away, trembling.

  “Aye, fly from the truth, madame!” Richenda went on, truly angry now. “But you cannot fly from Him who made both human and Deryni!”

  “Would that He had not!” Jehana sobbed.

  “And if He had not,” Richenda hammered on, “then we should not have been. Not you and I, not your son—nor even a Haldane Brion for you to marry! Why must you continue to persecute us, Jehana? Why must you persecute yourself?”

  The final accusation was too much for Jehana. Tears streaming down her face, she fled from the room, almost bowling over Conall, who had been just about to knock on the door. Glancing back over his shoulder in astonishment, Conall thrust his head around the edge of the screen and knocked on that as Jehana’s running footsteps receded down the corridor. He had a letter sealed with scarlet in his hand, and wore riding leathers and a look of amazement that quickly changed to faintly amused understanding as he ventured farther into the room and spotted Richenda still standing at her loom beside the window.

  “Good God, what did you say to my aunt to make her run like that?” he asked with a chuckle, making her a little bow. “One would have thought demons, at least, were after her!”

  “Only the demons that she herself allows,” Richenda said weakly. “Sometimes I think we make our own hell on earth, and need no threat of demons in the afterlife. But, enough of that. You have some missive for me?”

  “Oh, aye—and the messenger who brought it, too. Forgive the intrusion, but there’s a peddler in the yard who claims to have letters from a Cousin Rohays. He calls himself Ludolphus, if you can believe that. Frankly, he looks quite the brigand—a Moor of some sort, so far as I can tell—but he said you’d recognize this seal.” He handed over the letter in his hand and grinned and bowed again as he noticed Rothana in the window embrasure behind Richenda.

  “Anyway, he wouldn’t let me bring the rest,” he went on, more self-conscious now that he had seen Rothana. “He insisted he had to deliver them himself. Do you want to see him?”

  Richenda ran a fingertip over the seal and smiled as she sat at her loom again, aware that Rothana was becoming increasingly embarrassed by Conall’s sheepish glances.

  The seal did, indeed, come from Rohays, but—Ludolphus, indeed! Given the seal, Richenda had a fair idea what messenger Rohays had sent, and it was no peddler named Ludolphus!

  But Rothana would be as pleased to see him as herself—and receiving him would extricate Rothana from an increasingly uncomfortable situation.

  “Yes, thank you, Conall, I do. I’ve been expecting him. And would you please see that we’re not disturbed?”

  “Very well, if you’re sure. Ah—” He glanced at Rothana hopefully. “May I, perhaps, escort the Lady Rothana elsewhere?—assuming that you wish to see the fellow privately, of course.”

  “No, no, that won’t be necessary.” Richenda glanced up from breaking the seal just in time to see Conall erase a crestfallen expression. “Rohays is kin to Rothana as well as myself,” she explained, shards of scarlet wax exploding across her lap as she unfolded the stiff parchment. “Besides, if the fellow is as much the brigand as you say,
perhaps I shall need a chaperone.”

  Rothana flashed a smile both wistful and relieved and sank down on the seat in the window embrasure, making a self-conscious adjustment of her veil.

  “Very well,” Conall said doubtfully.

  As soon as the prince had bowed and made his exit, Richenda cast a droll glance at Rothana and stifled a giggle, raising the letter between herself and the doorway to shield her growing mirth.

  “Rothana, have you been leading Conall on?” she whispered. “He could hardly take his eyes off you! It must have been a very interesting journey back to Rhemuth.”

  “Oh, Richenda, I was only polite,” Rothana protested, clasping her hands tightly in her lap and blushing furiously. “He is rather nice, but—I’m under vows, for goodness’ sake!”

  “Well, I don’t suppose you can help how he reacts, can you?” Richenda replied, dismissing the subject with a smile as she began scanning her letter.

  “No,” said Rothana in a very quiet voice. “Maybe I just have that effect on Haldanes.”

  Richenda raised an eyebrow in surprise, wondering whether she had just heard what she thought she heard.

  “Any Haldanes in particular?”

  Rothana blushed and gave a furtive nod, twisting a handful of pale blue skirt in her lap.

  “Aye. I wasn’t going to tell you,” she whispered. “It’s probably nothing—I hope it’s nothing.”

  “Go on,” Richenda murmured, lowering her letter.

  “Well, it was the king,” Rothana admitted. “He—wanted to read Janniver to find out who’d attacked her. I told him no. Then he asked me to read her, and to show him what I saw.”

  “And did you?”

  Another reluctant nod. “Yes. But I was angry, Richenda. I know I should be able to forgive those who hurt me and the people I love, but I was outraged at what the soldiers had done to Janniver and my sisters, and—and maybe a little guilty that I’d escaped their fate. So I—took out some of my anger on the king. After I showed him what he wanted to know, I—made him feel a little of what it was like for—for her, to be—used that way.”