The Legends of Camber of Culdi Trilogy Page 8

  “Sire, I beseech you,” Cathan said dully. “If you do this, the weight of it will be upon your conscience. Amerce the villagers in coin, if you must. My father will be willing to pay. But do not take out your wrath in innocent human lives. The peasants of Caerrorie did not slay Rannulf. You know that.”

  Imre looked around at his growing following of courtiers in wry amusement, though it was apparent that he was beginning to be a little annoyed. “Cathan, you’re making me out to be a bully,” he said under his breath. “You know I don’t like that.”

  “Please, Sire,” Cathan repeated, dropping to his knees and lifting one empty hand in entreaty. “For the sake of our friendship, have mercy. Will you condone the taking of innocent human lives?”

  “Oh, come now, get up from there! Ariella, why is he doing this to me?”

  Ariella started to shrug, then looked at Cathan carefully as he got to his feet, her mouth curving in a strange smile. “I have a thought, Brother. Why don’t you give him what he wants? Give him one of those lives he finds so precious. For the sake of your friendship.”

  Cathan’s head snapped around to stare at her aghast, and the room suddenly became silent. Imre glared at her owl-eyed, then glanced at Cathan uncomfortably. His annoyance had changed to uncertainty.

  “One life?”

  Ariella nodded. “If Cathan is indeed your friend, dear brother, you could hardly refuse him this. Forty-nine peasants are enough for the life of Rannulf. He was a dreadful bore.”

  “One life …” Imre repeated, savoring the sound of the words on his tongue and wetting his lips beneath the tiny smudge of mustache.

  He looked at Maldred and Santare, at the courtiers watching expectantly, at the growing horror on Cathan’s face as he realized that the king was considering the suggestion seriously—then folded his arms across his chest with a sly grin.

  “It would be novel.”

  “And merciful,” Ariella crooned, clinging to his arm and gazing up at him adoringly.

  Imre glanced sidelong at her, his mouth curling in a pleased expression, then returned his gaze to Cathan. The royal lips parted.

  “Very well. Done. One life. Granted.” He glanced at Maldred and gave a curt nod. “Maldred, take Lord Cathan to the keep and let him choose a prisoner.”

  “Yes, Sire.”

  “And it’s not to be by lot or anything, either, Maldred,” Ariella added, smiling sweetly as Cathan stared at her in astonishment. “Our Lord Cathan has been granted the power of life and death—if only over a single person. If he’s to save a life, he should experience the exquisite torture of having to choose which one it is.”

  As Maldred bowed, Cathan fidgeted in disbelief and started to turn to Imre.

  “Did you have something to say, Cathan?” Ariella snapped, before he could speak.

  “Your Highness, I—”

  “Before you speak, let me remind you that His Grace can retract the boon,” Ariella warned, hazel eyes flashing. “It can be all fifty dead, you know—or more, if you press the issue. Now, do you still have something to say?”

  Cathan swallowed heavily and bowed his head. “No, Your Highness. I—thank you, Sire.” He bowed. “If Your Highness will excuse me, I—will attend to your command.”

  “You are excused, of course,” Ariella purred. “And, Cathan …” He stopped, but did not turn to face her. “You will be riding to the hunt with us in the morning, won’t you?” she continued. “You promised.”

  Cathan turned beseechingly. “Aye, I did promise, Your Highness. But if I might prevail upon you to relieve me of—”

  “Nonsense. If you stay home, you’ll simply brood about those peasants and become even duller than you’ve been these past few days. Imre, make him keep his promise. You know it will be good for him.”

  Imre glanced at his sister, then at Cathan. “She’s right, you know. You have been almost boorish lately.” He touched Cathan’s shoulder in a comradely gesture. “Come, Cathan. You mustn’t take things so seriously. After a week or so in the country, you’ll forget all about this peasant thing.”

  Cathan knew the tone of Imre’s voice, and knew better than to argue—especially when Ariella was nearby. With a defeated sigh, he nodded in acquiescence and bowed once more, then turned to follow Maldred from the hall. Just now, he had more important things on his mind than royal hunting expeditions. Unexpectedly, victory of a sort had been won—but it was dark, indeed. For out of fifty prisoners, he must choose one to live. Life for one; death for forty-nine. He shuddered at the power he now held in his choosing.

  Ten minutes later, he was standing with Maldred before a heavy door, watching numbly as a guard raised the iron bar and swung the door back on groaning hinges. Maldred bowed, and gestured toward the open doorway with a lazy wave of his hand.

  “When you’ve made up your mind, come to the door and call,” Maldred said, not bothering to disguise a yawn. “I’ll await you here. I find prisons quite depressing.”

  Cathan nodded, not daring to trust himself to speak, then slipped past Maldred and onto the landing. A torch blazed in a cresset on the wall to his left, and a long flight of stone steps descended into murky darkness before him. Shielding his eyes against the glare, he took the torch and began descending the staircase. The brand gave off a greasy smoke that made his nose itch and his eyes water.

  Eight steps. The steps turned. Then a narrower progression down eight more steps, another turn, and he was at the bottom. A corridor stretched off into a brighter area, and there were roughly forged iron bars along one side of the passage. On the other side of the bars was a series of interconnected cells, each with eight or ten human forms lying huddled together in the straw for warmth.

  A few of the forms stirred as he began moving down the corridor, and shortly there were soft murmurs. “Lord Cathan, it’s Lord Cathan!” The prisoners roused themselves and shuffled to the bars to peer at him. He noticed with a shock that there were at least five women among the prisoners, and several young males who were scarcely more than children.

  “Lord Cathan?”

  A familiar voice called from the end of the row of cells, and he approached to find old Edulf the Ostler clutching at the bars in amazement. Edulf had been one of his first riding instructors when he was a boy, the keeper of his father’s stables for as long as he could remember. He found his vision blurring, and he had to look down. He knew it was not caused by the smoke from the torch.

  “Lord Cathan?” the old familiar voice called again.

  “Yes, Edulf, it’s Cathan,” he said.

  He looked up at the old man, then let himself scan the others briefly. He found that he could not meet their eyes, and focused instead on their feet.

  “I’ve come from the king,” he finally said. It was all he could do to keep his voice from choking, but he managed to control it. “I—I’ve tried, from the instant I knew, to gain your release, but I’m afraid the news I bring is not good. The—executions will proceed tomorrow, as planned—with one exception.”

  He took a deep breath and dared to look up at them again, forcing himself to search their eyes. “I can save one of you. Only one.”

  There was silence as the words sank in, and then a few gasps, a muffled sob from one of the women. Old Edulf shuffled his feet in the straw and glanced at the others, then looked back at Cathan carefully.

  “Ye—ye can only save one, lad?”

  Cathan nodded miserably. “My Michaelmas ‘gift’ from Imre. Whom I choose shall live; the others die. I—don’t know how to make a choice.”

  A murmuring broke out among the prisoners, and then dead silence as all eyes turned to him. Faced with the anguished knowledge that only one of them could live, and that the choosing lay in the gift of this one man, whom many of them had known from boyhood, they looked instinctively to him, blindly trusting, each of them, that he would be the one Cathan would save. The thought that all forty-nine others would die was pushed to the recesses, as something which could not be comprehen
ded. The MacRories had always taken care of them in the past. Surely this was all some kind of terrible jest. And yet, they could not conceive of Lord Cathan being the perpetrator of so grim a charade. Dazedly, they watched as Cathan turned away to jam his torch into an empty cresset and bury his face in his hands.

  Cathan was no less affected. How could he choose? How dared he be the arbiter of life and death, and for his own people—some of them folk he had grown up with? Justice called for a cool, analytical, unemotional evaluation of the prisoners, with life given to the one best suited for survival and positive contributions for the future.

  But there were women, and young men scarcely into manhood. His chivalry cried out for the weak, the helpless. How could he possibly decide?

  He raised his head and inhaled deeply, forcing himself to hold the breath for a moment and then exhale slowly, the while reciting the words of the Deryni charm which would mask his fatigue. He must have a clear head to make so grave a decision. Another deep breath, and he felt his pulse steadying, the flat taste in his mouth receding.

  Squaring his shoulders, he turned slowly to face his people.

  Edulf was standing, hopefully, near the bars of his cell, two older men behind him, a young woman and two boys to their right. He recognized one of the boys as a herdsman from the village, and reasoned that the other was probably his brother, the girl possibly a sister or cousin. He did not know the two with Edulf.

  “Edulf?” he said softly.

  “Aye, m’lord.” The old voice was low, scared.

  “Much as I regret it, only one of these fine people will be able to leave with me tonight.” He swallowed to regain his composure. “And since I shall not have the opportunity to meet the others again, would you be so kind as to introduce the rest to me? I’m sure you know them all.”

  The old man blinked. “Aye, m’lord. Ye mean—ye want to meet each one by name, sir?”

  Cathan nodded.

  Edulf shuffled his feet uncomfortably and looked at the floor, then turned slightly toward the two men standing behind him. “Well, sir, if that’s what ye want. These are the Sellar brothers, Wat and Tim.”

  Cathan bowed acknowledgment and the brothers tugged their forelocks in embarrassment.

  “An’ this is Mary Weaver, an’ her brother Will an’ a cousin, Tom …”

  The introductions went on, Cathan often recognizing a name, or a face, or remembering that he had heard of this man or that as being particularly skilled at his trade, or a troublemaker, or reliable.

  He saw a young couple whose wedding he remembered Joram celebrating a year or so ago, the girl big with child, huddling in the protective circle of her husband’s arm; another, older man whose house Cathan had always seen teeming with happy, laughing children—children who would now have no father, unless Cathan intervened. A young man whose name Cathan recognized as having been one of Evaine’s brightest pupils in the village school—he was perhaps thirteen by now, and an apprentice carpenter by trade; another boy, the son of the manor bailiff, whom Camber had been thinking of sending off to Saint Liam’s for proper schooling as a clerk, so quick was the boy’s wit, and he but eleven, at that.

  And the list went on, each human soul unique in its own way, each properly entitled to life in its fullest; each, save one, condemned to die—and he must decide.

  When the last one had been presented, Cathan scanned them all again, his eyes touching briefly on Edulf, the pregnant girl and her husband, the young apprentice. Then he turned away and bowed his head. When he moved again, it was to walk briskly to the stone steps and vault up them two at a time. There was a grillework in the door at eye level, and it opened as he reached the landing.

  “Made up your mind, Cathan?” Maldred’s cruel voice said.

  Cathan leaned a forearm against the door and peered at the vague outline of Maldred’s head on the other side of the grille.

  “Maldred, you’ve got a pregnant woman down there.”

  “That’s right,” the voice responded. “Do you want her or the child?”

  “Her or—” Cathan cut off his retort in mid-sentence. “You mean that if I choose her, I could have only her? Not the child as well?”

  “His Grace said one, not two, Cathan,” the voice replied. “And you’d better make up your mind before he changes his. The guards will be here any minute to take the first two out.”

  Any minute! Cathan glanced at Maldred’s shadow, then at the floor, as he tried to calm his thoughts.

  “Then, by the same token,” Cathan continued, “if the woman should have her child before her turn comes for execution, you’d have to let another one go, wouldn’t you? I mean, a living child would make the number fifty instead of forty-nine. He’d have to release another one besides the one I take tonight, wouldn’t he?”

  There was an appreciative chortle from behind the grille. “That’s what I admire about you, Cathan. Always thinking. As a matter of fact, I suppose he might let another one go, if that were the case. Of course, that assumes that the woman survives that long, and isn’t chosen before her time comes to deliver.”

  Cathan glanced down the steps again, his lip between his teeth, then stood clear of the door.

  “All right, then, I’m ready to make my choice. Come down and let’s get on with it.”

  The door opened, and Maldred and two guards came through and followed Cathan down the dark stairs as two more guards closed the door behind them. They reached the bottom of the stairs and Maldred swept his gaze over the prisoners.

  “Well, which one is it to be, Cathan? I haven’t all night.”

  Cathan gestured for one of the guards to open the bars, then stepped through the opening to stand among his people. As he did, several went to their knees, and one of the women began sobbing softly. His hand brushed her bent head as he passed, and then he was moving among them, touching a hand here, a face there, this time extending his Deryni senses to the fullest, delving deep into the emotion filling the room, searching for the best of them to save.

  There—he had caught it!—the spark for which he searched. Now, to localize. It was coming from the right, from one of three young—

  He heard the sound of the door being opened at the top of the stairs, and he froze.

  “They’re coming to take the first two,” Maldred said behind him. “You’d best make up your mind.”

  He could hear footsteps descending the stair, the measured tread of well-trained soldiers coming to do their duty, however grim, and he cast a last, lingering look across the people gathered around him. Some of the younger men—boys, really—were trying to hold back sniffles, and two of the women were weeping openly. As the footsteps reached the bottom of the stairs, Cathan took two quick steps across the straw and held out his hand.

  “Revan, come with me,” he said, mentally flinching a little as the boy looked up at him in blank amazement.

  It was the carpenter’s apprentice, who walked with a slight limp, and from whom Cathan had read the thoughts worthy of salvation.

  “M—me, m’lord?”

  The boy’s eyes were wide, frightened, awed, and he stood frozen there, unable to reach out his hand to Cathan’s. The footsteps were approaching the cell now, the door being swung back to admit three of the soldiers, who were heading in his direction.

  “Take my hand, Revan,” Cathan commanded, his eyes boring into the boy’s. “Come out of this place of death, and live.”

  The guards took one of the women out of the cell, and she began moaning softly as the shackles were fastened to her wrists. As the guards re-entered the cell, the boy slowly reached out his hand. It touched Cathan’s just as the guards were about to take him, and they hesitated but a moment before fastening, instead, on Revan’s young companion, the bailiff’s son, who wailed as they carried him, kicking and crying, from the cell and shackled him as well. His cries sent the trembling Revan sobbing to his knees at Cathan’s feet, his hand still linked with the young lord’s.

  Maldred observed
the scene with amused distaste.

  “Well, if that’s your choice, let’s get him out of here,” the Earl finally said, motioning out of the cell as the guards took the two prisoners back up the stairs.

  As Maldred withdrew, taking the torch from the wall cresset, Cathan drew the boy to his feet and hugged him close for a moment, letting the boy’s tears relieve his anguish, then brushed the boy’s head with his palm, forcing calm into the boy’s mind. After a moment, the sobbing stopped and Revan stood on his own. With a weary sigh, Cathan put his arm around the boy’s shoulder and guided him out of the cell. When the guard had locked the bars, Cathan turned to look at them once more.

  “Good night, my friends,” he said quietly. “I dare not hope that I shall see you again in this world.” He lowered his eyes. “I pray that the next will give you more justice. My prayers will go with you.”

  As he turned to go, there was a faint rustling in the cells, and then all within were on their knees.

  “God go wi’ ye, young master,” Edulf called gently.

  “Keep the lad well,” another called.

  “We thank ye.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  O that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain, that I might weep day and night for the slain …

  —Jeremiah 9:1

  Later, Cathan was unable to remember leaving the keep. Somehow, he got the boy home safely and had him fed and put to bed by the servants. He remembered the hour he had spent writing to his father about the night’s failure (for so he viewed it), which missive was dispatched straightaway by messenger when Cathan had signed and sealed it.

  But of the rest of that evening’s aftermath, he remembered not a thing, from the time he put his head down on his arms at the desk, intending only to rest his eyes for a moment, until he felt a hand on his shoulder, shaking him to wakefulness, and heard the voice of his steward, Master Wulpher, quietly informing him that it was near dawn and his bath drawn.

  Cramped muscles protesting, he allowed himself to be led into his chamber to bathe and don fresh clothes, fidgeting in irritation as his body servant tried to shave him. But he could not stomach the morning ale which Wulpher brought him. The mere thought made him queasy. After giving Wulpher instructions to cover his absence with the royal hunt, he looked in once more on the sleeping Revan before making his reluctant way down to the courtyard where Crinan, his squire, waited with the horses.