“Sweet Jesu, why?” Javan whispered, sinking down on his haunches as Guiscard knelt down to inspect the body.
“Perhaps despondency over having lost the trust of his king,” Rhun said coldly. He and Albertus had been among the men examining the room and the body when the king arrived, along with a Custodes battle surgeon. “These men had no future, Sire, for their liege lord had determined unjustly to banish them from his presence.”
“Don’t be ridiculous!” Javan retorted, though his cheeks were burning. “That isn’t sufficient cause to take one’s life—and especially not like this. Robear, do you think this could be something left from what Sitric set, when he took them over?”
“Why not ask if it was something left from Master Oriel’s work, Sire?” Rhun went on, not relenting. “If Sitric had set an order to self-destruct, they would have done it before they could be examined for evidence against him. But Oriel was in their minds only yesterday.”
“That’s absurd!” Charlan blurted. “If they didn’t speak out against Oriel yesterday, they obviously weren’t ever going to do it. Why would he do such a stupid thing? It serves absolutely no purpose other than to set tongues like yours to wagging!”
“Sire, I suggest you curb this impudent puppy, or I shall be forced to whip him for his impertinence!” Rhun retorted. “Do you dare to defend the Deryni, boy?”
“You go too far, my lord!” Javan warned, lurching to his feet. “Charlan, to me. I’ll have no quarreling among my own people. Guiscard, if you please.”
Guiscard had been continuing to inspect the body, ostensibly testing at the amount of rigor and examining the wounds, but rose immediately at Javan’s summons.
“It wasn’t Nevell’s idea,” he murmured to the king as they headed back down to the great hall for food none of them really wanted. Rhys Michael had left them to return to his own apartments, saying he would have something sent up later. “I wish it were possible for Oriel to do a proper examination of the bodies, but after Rhun’s remark, you don’t dare order it.”
“Why not?” Javan whispered.
“Because if it’s suggested that they were forced to do it, he’s the only suspect—or you’d better hope he is. Because if he didn’t do it—and you and I certainly didn’t, or my father—that means there’s another Deryni about. Unless it’s Sitric’s ghost, I can hazard a fair guess, and I expect you could, too.”
Javan pulled up short to stare at Guiscard. “Dimitri? Here?”
“Well, I doubt he could do it from Arx Fidei,” Guiscard replied. “And it’s occurred to me that they wouldn’t have risked Sitric if they didn’t have a backup in reserve.”
“It has to have been one of the new Custodes who have appeared in the last month or so, then,” Javan murmured. “But there’s been no one to match the face we got from Serafin.”
“He had a beard,” Guiscard said, suddenly sitting forward. “And he was wearing lay attire. But shave off the beard, and put him in Custodes habit—picture it, Sire.”
Javan sat back in his chair, suddenly deflated, now well aware where he had seen that face.
“The battle surgeon who showed up with Albertus,” he breathed. “He was at the inquest yesterday, and he was even with him this morning.” He closed his eyes and conjured up the image—the same greying brown hair, now cut short and tonsured, the dark eyes, always carefully veiled, the sensuous mouth—the tiny indentation in the right earlobe that once had permitted a gold earring to pass through.
“Dear God, what can we do?”
Indeed, as the king asked that question, Dimitri was already advancing his efforts on his masters’ behalf, sequestered with Albertus and Rhun and Hubert in Paulin’s dayroom down at the cathedral.
“This morning was most illuminating, my lords,” he reported, standing before them where they sat before the fire. “Knowing what you have told me of the king, I cannot swear that what I sensed was a Deryni power stirring; but it was very like Deryni. And it came from either the king or possibly the knight he calls Guiscard.”
“De Courcy?” Rhun said.
“I would tend to favor the king,” Dimitri said, “though I grant you it is possible that both were involved. This supports the impressions I was able to gather from the soldiers Baldwin and Nevell before setting other instructions in their minds. Not knowing to suspect the king, both assumed that Master Oriel was the source of the attack. But in fact, neither had any clear memory of the exact moment. Also, Master Oriel had a great deal of merasha in him by then. It does not seem likely that he could have focused sufficiently to raise such power.”
“It has to have been the king, then,” Paulin murmured. “The stories are true, and the Haldanes do have power. They may not be Deryni, but their power comes from the Deryni. And that, in itself, is sufficient reason to see him brought down and destroyed!”
No intimation of this intent reached Javan in the weeks that followed. The “battle surgeon” they thought was Dimitri was no more seen at Court—which tended to confirm that it was he who had been responsible for at least some of the recent unpleasantness—and Javan dared not inquire concerning him. He could only be glad of the man’s absence and hope that neither he nor Guiscard had betrayed himself in his presence.
Sir Gavin received the lavish funeral merited by his gallant death in the king’s service and was buried with all due ceremony at Rhemuth Cathedral. The suicides Baldwin and Nevell joined Father Faelan in the potter’s field by the river. Rhun was allowed to have Sitric buried in holy ground at Saint Hilary’s—a Custodes priest presided—and reluctantly agreed that the dead man’s mother and sister might join Ursin’s family when Javan sent them north to meet the holy Revan.
With Oriel well out of sight, rarely venturing outside his room, that aspect of the furore also faded. Javan could no longer make open use of the Deryni’s services for Truth-Reading, but at least he had him as a Healer. And when Ursin turned up dead in his bed late in April, the morning after one of his routine testings with merasha, Javan took the Healer with him to examine the body.
“There’s no mark upon him, Sire,” the court physician said, who had been summoned initially when Ursin did not rouse for breakfast. “I give you my word, he was fine last night when I left him. Of course he was groggy from the merasha, but he had not even been given his customary second dose. Since your Highness had determined to release him to the care of the Custodes, such precautions no longer seemed necessary, just to move him from room to room. Perhaps his heart failed as he slept. This cannot have been an easy life for him.”
The man spoke no more than the truth, as both Javan and Oriel knew full well, but when the man had gone, Javan had the Healer examine the body more closely. Charlan was with him; Guiscard was outside with Sir Sorle, questioning the guards who had been on duty. Other than the expected puncture marks in Ursin’s forearm where the known dose of merasha had been administered, there were no marks upon the body. But when Oriel delved deeper to attempt a Death-Reading, he recoiled after only a few seconds.
“Dear God,” he whispered, clutching at his head in stunned disbelief.
“What is it?” Javan demanded.
With a shake of his head to delay answering until he had finished the Reading, Oriel bowed his head over the dead man again, trembling hands set on the cold forehead, then withdrew again, shaking his head as he held out a hand to Javan.
Stealthy footsteps in the night, Ursin rousing from drug-fogged sleep just as three shadow-shapes converged on him, two holding him down while the third jammed a pillow to his face.
Struggling to fight off his assailants, knowing they sought his death, fighting to breathe, body beginning to go into spasms, strength draining from his limbs—and then, just as consciousness dwindled almost to oblivion, respite from the smothering pillow only to have his jaws forced apart and a vial of burning liquid poured down his throat, numbing his tongue and sending paralysis coursing along his limbs and into his brain …
As Javan withdrew from
the contact, shaking, Oriel was already opening the dead man’s mouth, peering down the throat, recoiling again at the concentration of merasha still present—far more than enough to kill.
“But who would do this?” Javan whispered to Guiscard, when the body had been removed and Oriel had been sent back to the safety of his quarters with his guards. “And why? He wasn’t a threat to anyone. And if the Custodes wanted him dead, all they had to do was wait a few weeks, until they got him to Ramos.”
He had not disclosed Oriel’s findings to anyone outside his immediate circle of confidants, for anything Oriel said would only throw unwanted scrutiny back on him again and underline Deryni abilities that were best downplayed. Furthermore, Guiscard’s questioning of the guards suggested that it had taken a Deryni to penetrate the security around Ursin’s room. He had not been able to do more than Truth-Read, but the men were absolutely adamant—and telling the truth as they remembered it—that no one had passed them during the night.
“My guess would be that Dimitri’s back,” Guiscard said, “but we can’t even ask Paulin about him without arousing new suspicion. With Oriel discredited, we have no legitimate way of knowing about Dimitri.”
The Deryni knight made a special point of scrutinizing as many Custodes men as he could in the next few days, sometimes taking chances that might have betrayed him if he had uncovered a Deryni agent, but when he discovered that a Custodes party had left Rhemuth the very morning that Ursin’s death was discovered, he dropped his investigation. The discovery tended to support their suspicions, but they could prove nothing and ask nothing.
Meanwhile, Ursin was allowed burial at Saint Hilary’s, near the grave of the departed Sitric, and Archbishop Hubert’s expressed regret over Ursin’s death even extended to allowing his widow to attend the funeral—though not her Deryni son. No other mourners attended, other than the Custodes guards who had been on duty the night of Ursin’s death, plus the court physician who had attended him the day before. Paulin himself elected to officiate at the solemn requiem the king had ordered for the repose of Ursin’s soul, and spoke almost regretfully of the monastic profession Ursin had intended to make for the redemption of his Deryni soul, now thwarted by his untimely death.
Javan stood far back in the basilica during the Mass with his brother and Charlan and Guiscard and Read the truth of Paulin’s words, almost convinced that the Vicar General had had no part in Ursin’s death, but he could not bring himself to go forward for Communion at Paulin’s hands. Nor did the others. He could tell that it did not sit well with Paulin, but he did not care. Afterward he returned to a testy session with his Council at which everything Hubert said seemed to irritate him. Paulin was not present, but Albertus was.
But overt hostility to the king’s ideas seemed to abate somewhat after Ursin’s death. Apparently the idea of sending a former Deryni into even a lay religious situation had rankled his great lords more than Javan realized. Concurrently, a clean disposition of the now-superfluous families of Ursin and the slain Sitric began to gain growing approval. Even Hubert’s objections to the Revan solution seemed to have died away, and Javan began to hope that perhaps he had gotten past the worst of the opposition.
With winter fading into spring, he sent Sir Bertrand de Ville north to inquire regarding Master Revan as soon as the roads were passable again, while his Council sat in Rhemuth and began collating the writs of disclosure that began coming in as the roads cleared. Meanwhile, he worked mostly through Etienne de Courcy to keep Joram informed of his progress, and had him working at the other end to prepare an appropriate reception for the three women and the boy who shortly would be sent north.
It was late in April when Sir Bertrand returned with word that Master Revan was back at the bend in the Eirial River, offering his new baptism to wash Deryni clean. He had met with the master to tell him of the king’s plans, and with one of his captains underwent an icy immersion to receive cleansing of any taint they might have incurred by contact with Deryni themselves, whether or not they had been aware of it. They came away with a blessing—“not my blessing, but the blessing of the Lord of Hosts,” Revan had assured them—and Bertrand with the beginnings of a head cold. But royal knight and men returned convinced that the Master Revan’s work was both benign and beneficial, and so reported back to the Council on their arrival back in Rhemuth.
“I wouldn’t go so far as to say that Master Revan is a saint,” Bertrand confided, between swipes at his nose with a soggy handkerchief, “but surely purifying those who have been contaminated by Deryni contact, and cleansing Deryni themselves of their evil, is far preferable to merely seeking out and destroying them. Isn’t it better to offer these unfortunate people some hope of redemption? If compassion and mercy can accomplish the same purpose as ruthlessness, is this not preferable, if we say we walk in the example of our Lord?”
It was the basic argument that Javan himself had set in Bertrand’s mind before sending him north, though augmented by the young knight’s own passion at having experienced Revan’s cleansing firsthand. Somewhat to his surprise, the Council seemed to respond to it rather well.
Too well, perhaps. Nothing in the response of any man in the room rang false, but Javan sensed an underlying current of tension that he could not explain. He knew that Paulin intended to test Revan further on Hubert’s behalf, but not even the Custodes Vicar General raised the objections to Bertrand’s enthusiasm that Javan might have expected. He tried for several days to get Hubert alone, in hopes of gaining further insight by a quick probe, but the archbishop always seemed to have others around him. At length, Javan decided that perhaps the royal presence was indicated for the expedition, to ensure that things went smoothly.
He broached the subject to the Council and encountered a vague uneasiness—which simply confirmed that it probably was a good idea to go. The weather was improving daily, and he had a loyal Haldane garrison in place in Rhemuth that should be more than adequate to keep order for Rhys Michael. Also, the thought of an outing was appealing after a winter cooped up in the castle. Nor would it hurt to show the royal presence in the north. It was only about a week’s easy journey to where Revan was working, even travelling by easy stages on account of the women and the boy.
The Council’s full approval was still uncertain when he adjourned for the day to give them time to consider further, but resistance had been wavering all afternoon. That evening he had dinner with Rhys Michael and Michaela and outlined his intentions with them.
“I shouldn’t be gone more than a fortnight,” he said, “and most of the potential troublemakers will be going with me. I’ll leave you Tomais, of course; and I think it’s fairly certain by now that Udaut is our man. That should ensure the loyalty of the castle garrison. And you’ll have Etienne and Jerowen and Lord Hildred.”
“I can handle that,” Rhys Michael agreed. “And I’ve got Oriel, in case Mika needs help.” He reached across to squeeze her hand. “It’s months before anything’s due to happen, though. You should be well back before that. Who’s going with you?”
“Well, Charlan and Guiscard, of course. And Paulin will bring Lior, to make sure his three Deryni really do get ‘purified.’ That probably means he’ll also want Albertus and a bunch of Custodes to escort us, but I’ll take along a good-size Haldane levy under Robear’s command. That should keep the Custodes from getting any stupid ideas.”
“What about Rhun?”
“I’ll take him, too, so you don’t have to worry about him. He can ride with Albertus. He’d like to be the next Earl Marshal, you know.”
Rhys Michael snorted and grinned. “Not bloody likely. It sounds like good strategy, though. You think they’ll really let you go?”
Javan gave him a sour look. “Do you really think I’d let them stop me?”
In Hubert’s quarters down at the cathedral, the archbishop was asking the same question of Paulin.
“No, I think he’s made up his mind,” Paulin replied. “Our young king has become very wi
se in nearly seventeen years of living. I don’t think you’re going to turn him around. Fortunately, there’s a contingency plan already in place.”
Hubert glanced at Albertus, sitting silent and slyly smiling beside his brother, then back at Paulin.
“Just what are you up to, Paulin?” he whispered.
“Just never you mind,” Paulin replied.
“But the hostages are Deryni—”
“They will be dealt with, I assure you.”
“And the king?”
Paulin smiled. “Let him go to Master Revan.”
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
And their king shall go into captivity, he and his princes together, saith the Lord.
—Amos 1:15
The departure of the former hostages was set for the first week in May. On the third, Holy Rood Day, Javan heard Mass in the Chapel Royal with his household and family, ceremonially handed over command of the castle to his brother on the great hall steps, and joined the entourage mounting up in the castle yard.
Robear had his Haldane levies lined up by fours and stretching back into the practice yard—fifty Haldane lancers with their officers, Haldane livery bright gold and crimson in the morning sun. Albertus had assembled his escort of twenty Custodes knights just outside the castle gates, forming a double line through which the royal party would pass—for Paulin had indeed declared himself leery of travelling without powerful escort in these troubled times, especially with Deryni in their company.
More Custodes men-at-arms sat their horses in the castle yard, a pair for each of the three curtained horse litters standing at the head of the modest baggage train. A Custodes battle surgeon was leaning into one of the litters to check on its occupant—not the elusive Dimitri, Javan was relieved to see, as he swung up on his cream-colored stallion and the man emerged. It had been agreed that all four hostages should be sedated for the journey, but not with merasha, which could prove harmful over the five or six days the journey was expected to take.