In the King's Service tcmt-1 Read online

  «And pray that it no more passes through the female line», Seisyll muttered. «I, for one, shall be greatly relieved when he's grown and married and has an heir. At least Stevana had a boy, God rest her, and blood is blood…»

  Chapter 1

  «Is it not a grief unto death, when a companion and friend is turned to an enemy?»[2]

  Far from where the Camberian Council sat in secret session, crafting their careful, deliberate plans for the future of their race, the wife of one of its members lay propped amid the pillows of their curtained and canopied bed and waited for the nurse to bring her infant son for feeding. Two days after his birth, Lady Jessamy MacAthan was feeling far stronger, but both the pregnancy and the delivery of this latest bairn had taken more out of her than any of her previous children, even the stillborn ones.

  Of course, she was older than when she had birthed any of the others — past forty now — and with a growing history of miscarriages and stillbirths. She had not even been certain she could conceive again, much less carry a child to term.

  But this child was important, destined for a secret but very special role in the future unfolding for Gwynedd and its kings to come. It was too soon to tell precisely what young Krispin's magical potential would prove to be, but his parentage ensured that he would be no ordinary boy.

  The nursery door opened, and Mistress Anjelica brought in the fretting, wiggling bundle hat was her son, shushing and cooing over him as she laid him in his mother's arms.

  «He's very hungry, milady», the woman said, as Jessamy put him to her breast.

  «Yes, I can see that», Jessamy replied, smiling. «And greedy, too. He's like a wee limpet. Thank heaven he hasn't any teeth! But you needn't sit with me. I know you must have things that need doing. Are the girls asleep?»

  «Yes, milady».

  «Good. I'll call you when we're finished».

  She readjusted the child in the hollow of her arm and settled back to let him feed as the nurse retired, allowing the sweet lethargy of his suckling to drift her into idle remembrance, wondering what Sief would say, if he were ever to penetrate past her shields to learn the truth — though Jessamy would resist him to the death, were he ever to try.

  She had never wanted or intended to marry Sief, who was sixteen years her senior. But her mother had died when she was but ten, and the loss of her father the following year had left her in the hands of guardians who insisted on the match: powerful Deryni, who had feared what Lewys ap Norfal's daughter might become, and had sought to minimize the danger by seeing her safely wed to one of their own. Though she had never come to regard Sief with more than resigned acceptance, she loved the children he had given her; and she had learned to live with the arrangement because she must, and to wear the façade of a dutiful wife, because outward compliance allowed her at least an illusion of freedom here at the court of Gwynedd — if only Sief knew how free. Her love of her children was one of the honest things about her life, as was her affection for the queens she had served here in Rhemuth for the past thirty years.

  By now, memories of any other home had mostly receded to a distant blur, dangerous though it was to be Deryni in Rhemuth. Even before Rhemuth, her parents had never stayed long in one place, lest their Deryni nature be discovered — and Lewys ap Norfal had never been good at hiding what he was for long. Had they lived in Gwynedd those early years, she now thought it unlikely that Lewys would have survived long enough to sire any children. Even so, he had been notorious among his own kind, and had met his end attempting magic usually deemed impossible, even among the most accomplished of their race.

  Putting an end to that nomad existence, Sief had brought her to Gwynedd's capital immediately after their hurried marriage, giving the care of his frightened child-bride into the hands of the king's daughter-in-law, the gentle and sensitive Princess Dulchesse, who had been the wife of then-Crown Prince Donal Blaine Haldane.

  That pairing, at least, had prospered, for the two women had liked one another from the start. Dulchesse, but one-and-twenty herself and already six years married, had yet to give her husband an heir, but she had gladly taken the orphaned Jessamy under her wing and assumed the role of elder sister and surrogate mother, giving her the fierce protection of her royal station as the still-hopeful mother of kings. Indeed, in all but name, the princess had been functioning as Gwynedd's queen for all her married life; for Roisian of Meara, King Malcolm's queen, had withdrawn to a convent the same year Dulchesse came to court. The rift had come the previous year, after Malcolm was obliged to lead an expedition into rebellious Meara and execute several members of Roisian's family. One of them had been Roisian's twin sister.

  Alas for Sief, placing his young bride in the household of the crown princess had not turned out at all as he expected; but by the time he realized that he had become the victim of feminine solidarity, it was too late to change his mind.

  «You may be certain that I shall school her to a wife you may be proud of, my lord», Dulchesse had told the disbelieving Sief, on learning that he planned to allow Jessamy but a year's grace before consummating their marriage, «but you shall not touch her until her fourteenth birthday. She's but a child. Give her the chance to finish growing up».

  «Your Highness, she is a woman grown», Sief had protested. «She has begun her monthly courses».

  «Yes, and if she should conceive so young, you are apt to lose, both wife and child. You shall wait».

  «Your Highness-»

  «Must I ask the king to tell you this?» she retorted, stamping her little foot.

  Before such fierce determination, Sief had been left with no recourse but to bow before the wishes of his future queen.

  Accordingly, Jessamy had been allowed to spend those stolen days of extended girlhood as a pampered pet of the princess's household, acquiring the skills and graces expected of a knight's lady and carefully beginning to craft the façade that she hoped would protect her in the future. For Sief had warned her, on that numb journey from Coroth, that her very life would be in danger, were it to be discovered at court that she was Deryni.

  «The king will guess», he had told her. «I know he has surmised what I am, though we have never spoken of it openly. But others will not be so tolerant, should they even suspect what we are».

  «If it is so dangerous», she had replied, «then why do you abide in Rhemuth?»

  «Because my work is there».

  When he did not elaborate, she had dared to lift her chin to him in faint challenge.

  «Did they order you to serve the king?»

  His cold appraisal in response had caused her to drop her gaze nervously, pretending profound interest in a strand of her pony's mane.

  «Jessamy, I shall say this only once», he had finally said in a very low voice. «I know that your father set certain controls in place to protect you, as I — and others — have also done. But to protect you fully would be to leave you helpless.

  «Therefore, I must trust you in this, and trust in your good sense and the training you have received. I know it was not your wish to marry me, but I cannot think that you resent that enough to wish me dead, and yourself as well — which would very likely be the outcome, were we discovered. You know that I tell you only the truth. This is for your protection as well as my own».

  Indeed, there could be no doubt that he did speak the truth — her powers confirmed that — and it never, ever occurred to her to betray him, little though she cared for her situation. Nor was she ever tempted to unmask any of the other Deryni who passed through the court from time to time — though, as her affection for the crown princess grew, she came to realize that she would act against even her own kind, should they pose any danger to the royal family.

  But for better or for worse, most of the other Deryni she detected were old acquaintances of her father, a few of whom had even been present in Coroth on that fateful night. Instinctively, she gave them wide berth. The ones who came to worry her far more were the ones she could not de
tect.

  Recognition of this deficiency in her abilities made her determined to rectify it, though she dared not go to Sief for the training she knew she needed. Fortunately, her studies with her father had been sufficiently advanced that she was able to shield her true intentions from Sief and begin formulating her own plans for the future, though she knew that she needed to know more. Unfortunately, she was still a child, albeit an exceedingly well-educated one for her age and sex. But at least Sief mostly left her alone for those next three years.

  Once she had settled into the routine of the royal household, she had begun looking for ways to further her education — at least the conventional part of it. When she let it be known that she possessed a fair copy hand and read and spoke several classical languages, she soon found herself being summoned to the royal library to assist in cataloging the king's manuscript collection. There she came to the especial attention of Father Mungo, the aged chaplain to the royal household, who was taken with her learning and her willingness to learn (and most assuredly did not know that she was Deryni), and soon began giving her private tutorials.

  She shortly discovered that both the king and the crown prince frequented the library on a regular basis — and thereby gained permission to spend time there whenever her duties permitted. Further honing of her esoteric talents would have to wait until she could figure out a way to gain access to teachers, or at least to texts, but in the meantime, Father Mungo's lessons and her own explorations in the royal library filled the time and gave her more tools for later on.

  But she had known that her reprieve must end. On the day of her fourteenth birthday, on a sunny morning in early autumn, she was obliged to stand with Sief before the Archbishop of Rhemuth and reaffirm her marriage vows, in the presence of Malcolm and his new queen, the Lady Síle, Donal and Dulchesse, and all the royal household, for Sief was well regarded at court, and all agreed that he had shown remarkable forbearance in waiting three years for his bride. Reassured by Dulchesse, and gently briefed regarding what to expect when Sief finally came to her bed, Jessamy had endured her wedding night with reasonable grace.

  She had conceived within months, shortly after the new queen was delivered of a prince christened Richard. Her own firstborn, a boy also named Sief, would have been a playmate for the new prince, but the infant died hardly a week after birth. Jessamy had not yet turned fifteen.

  More pregnancies had followed at barely two-year intervals after that: a succession of mostly healthy girls, stillborn boys, and early miscarriages. The ones who did not survive were allowed burial in a corner of the royal crypt, for the childless Dulchesse began to regard them as the children she would never have. Queen Síle had also come to mourn Jessamy's losses — and Dulchesse's barrenness — and buried several children of her own, in time. The three women had visited the little graves regularly until Queen Síle's death, the same year as King Malcolm's. Dulchesse, finally queen at last, had died but two years ago. Now Jessamy laid flowers on the other women's graves as well as those of the children, sometimes in the company of the new queen, Richeldis, who had quickly borne King Donal his long-awaited heir.

  For Jessamy herself, there had been only a few pregnancies after the birth of Jesiana, her nine-year-old, and only one brought to term until Krispin: yet another girl, now four, called Seffira, whom Jessamy loved dearly. Though Sief was mostly indifferent to his daughters, his desire for a son was still strong, and he continued to visit her bed on a tiresomely regular basis, despite the apparent waning of her fertility. Sometimes she wondered whether her own antipathy had kept her from quickening — especially when this latest child had been so easy to conceive. Young Krispin, however, had been greatly desired — though not in the sense that her husband supposed.

  His very begetting had been profoundly different from any of the others — no resentful and resigned yielding to marital duty, but welcome fruit of a well-planned series of quick, focused couplings that were timed to the most propitious few days of her monthly cycle, accomplished quite dispassionately amid briefly lifted skirts in a shadowed upper corridor of the castle, where others rarely went — or bent over a library table, or braced against a hay bale far at the back of the royal stables, surrounded by the warm, dusty fragrance of lazing horses. Her pulse quickened at the very thought of those days, though it was the daring of what she had done rather than lust that excited her.

  Within days she had known she was with child, and thought she could pinpoint exactly when conception had occurred, though she let Sief think that it had come of their usual, more conventional conjugal encounters. The memory stirred a pleasant aching in her loins, quite apart from the soreness after birth, intensified by the sweet suckling of the babe at her breast.

  A tap at the room's inner door announced the intrusion of the babe's nurse, white-coifed head ducking in apology as she eased into the light of the candles burning beside the curtained bed.

  «You have a visitor, milady», the woman said. The king has come to pay his respects. Shall I take the baby?»

  «No, show him in», Jessamy replied. «Then leave us».

  «Alone, milady?» Anjelica said, looking faintly scandalized.

  «Anjelica, he's the king».

  «Yes, milady».

  The woman withdrew dutifully, unaware that her compliance had been encouraged by Jessamy's deft reinforcement. Very shortly, the king peered around the door and then entered, closing the door behind him and grinning. Jessamy smiled in return, inclining her head over the baby's in as much of a bow as could be managed from a mostly reclining position. As she looked up, she saw a flicker of pleased amusement kindle behind the clear gray eyes.

  He did not look his age, though she knew that she looked hers, especially after the rigors of late pregnancy and childbirth — and she, more than a decade his junior. Now past fifty, Donal Blaine Aidan Cinhil was still the epitome of Haldane comeliness, fit and dashing in his scarlet hunting leathers. Gold embroidery of a coronet circled the crown of his scarlet hunting cap, and a white plume curled rakishly over one eye, caught in place with a jeweled brooch. While his close-clipped beard and his moustache were acquiring decided speckles of gray, hardly a trace of silver threaded his black hair — unlike her own once-dark tresses. The loosely plaited braid tumbling over one shoulder was decidedly piebald.

  He took off his cap as he came farther into the room, tossing it onto a chest at the foot of the great bed with easy grace. He had been born in the halcyon years shortly following Gwynedd's costly victory at Killingford in 1025, the only surviving son of Malcolm Haldane and Roisian of Meara, whose marriage was to have cemented a lasting peace between the two lands. Instead, it had spawned a new dispute regarding the Mearan succession — and launched the first in an ongoing series of Haldane military incursions back into Meara.

  The succession, even in Gwynedd, had remained precarious in the years that followed, for Donal was the only male heir Malcolm had produced by his first marriage, despite several children by assorted mistresses, the known ones legitimated shortly before his death but without dynastic rights. Donal's half-siblings had made good marriages and served him loyally, and Malcolm's second marriage to Queen Síle had produced another true-born prince in Duke Richard — Donal's heir presumptive until the birth of Prince Brion, little though Richard aspired to the crown. Though trained from birth to rule after Donal, if need be, none had rejoiced more than he when, within a year of his brother's new nuptials, Queen Richeldis had presented Donal with his long-awaited son: Prince Brion Donal Cinhil Urien Haldane, born the previous June.

  «Good evening, Sire», Jessamy said to the father of that prince, as he moved closer beside the bed. «How fares the son and heir?»

  «He flourishes», Donal replied, smiling. «When I put a sword in his hand, he doesn't want to let go. I expect he will be walking soon. He pulls himself up already. And how fares your son and heir?»

  «He suckles well. He knows to reach out for what he wants. His father has reason to be proud of h
im».

  «May I see him?» Donal asked, craning for a closer look.

  «Of course».

  Gathering the infant's blankets around him, and carefully supporting the tiny head, Jessamy held out the bundle to the king, who took the babe in the crook of his arm and proceeded to inspect him thoroughly.

  «He appears to have the correct number of fingers and toes and other appendages», Donal declared. «And those are warrior's hands», he added, letting the infant seize one of his fingers and convey it to the tiny rosebud mouth. «He will be a fitting companion for a prince».

  «One had hoped that would be the case», Jessamy agreed good-naturedly.

  «Brothers — that's what they'll be», came the reply. «He's perfect. His hair will be like yours, I think», Donal went on, gently cupping the child's downy head. «But those are not your eyes, or Sief’s».

  «No», was all the child's mother replied.

  Chuckling softly, Donal let himself sit on the edge of the bed, and was carefully giving the child back into its mother's keeping when the bedroom door opened and Sief entered.

  «Ah, and here's the proud father now», Donal said, twisting around to greet the newcomer. «I'd come to congratulate you, Sief, and to inspect the new bairn. And to cheer the mother in her childbed, if the truth be known. My queen tells me that a new mother appreciates such things. Not that she speaks to me overmuch, of late. The morning sickness is a trial she would liefer have foregone for a few more months».

  Sief found himself smiling dutifully in response to the king's boyish grin, though he could not say why he found it unsettling to find Donal here.

  They had long been friends beyond mere courtier and prince. He had served Donal Haldane for most of his life — had been assigned by King Malcolm as the prince's first aide, when Sief was a new-made knight and Donal but a lad of ten — and been his confidant and brother-in-arms through many a campaign and court intrigue. It had taken most of a decade for the young prince to guess that Sief was Deryni. By then, Sief had come to realize that Donal possessed certain powers of his own that were somewhat similar, somehow related to his kingship. Malcolm had possessed them as well, and perhaps had also recognized Sief for what he was, though they had never spoken of it.