The new king had not truly comprehended the scope of his captors’ ambitions in the beginning. It was horror enough that he must fall under their control. Drugged nearly to senselessness during the coup itself, he had been kept drug-blurred for some months thereafter, all through the public spectacle of his brother’s burial and then the sham of his own coronation.
Only when he had been safely crowned did they make their intentions clear—and underlined their demands with threats of the most abhorrent nature concerning the fate of his queen if he did not comply. He had been spared to be a puppet king and to breed Haldane princes who, in due course, would fall totally under the sway of the great lords—and under the sway of regents, if their father made himself sufficiently troublesome that he must be eliminated before a tame heir came of age.
Fortunately for all concerned, especially the king, the prospect of another regicide became less and less likely as the first few months passed. Though dispirited at first, the new king gradually seemed to become reconciled to the inevitability of his situation, allowing himself to be shaped as the docile and biddable figurehead they required.
Compliance slowly bought small indulgences. Once the king ceased to be argumentative or to display stubborn flashes of independent thinking, permission was granted for him to attend routine meetings of the council. A satisfactory history of behavior at council meetings earned him the privilege of presiding over formal courts, though always closely attended and working from a carefully rehearsed script. Very occasionally, the queen and later their young son were allowed to appear at his side on state occasions. After the first year or so, when it appeared that he had accepted the restrictions placed upon him and decided to make the most of royal privilege, they had even allowed him to resume his training in arms, against just such a threat as now seemed to be materializing. The queen’s new pregnancy seemed to confirm Rhys Michael’s capitulation, though there were some seated around this table who still had reservations.
“Let’s get down to specifics,” Tammaron said. “This hardly comes as any great surprise, after all. We’ve been aware of increased Torenthi troop movements up along the Eastmarch border since last fall.”
Several of the others nodded their agreement, and Rhun muttered something about having warned them long before that.
“It’s just the sort of beginning we might have expected,” Tammaron went on. “A test incursion into—”
The door to the council chamber slammed back without preamble to admit Paulin of Ramos, black-clad and predatory looking as he stalked into the room. The mere presence of the Vicar-General of the Ordo Custodum Fidei produced no dismay, for he was as heavily involved in intrigue as the rest of them, and one of the architects of their rise to power, but he had been expected to remain with his brother Albertus, questioning the messengers.
“A Torenthi herald has just arrived under a flag of truce,” Paulin announced, flouncing angrily into his usual place to Hubert’s right. “The man demands an immediate audience of the king and declines to reveal his business except in the king’s presence.”
“Do you think he comes from King Arion?” Manfred asked.
“No, I do not. I thought so at first, but the Torenthi arms on his tabard are differenced. The black hart is gorged of a coronet. That’s Arion’s brother.”
“Miklos!” Rhun muttered.
“And the Eastmarch messengers claim that Miklos was behind the taking of Culliecairn,” Tammaron said, enlightenment dawning on the angular face.
“Precisely,” Paulin agreed. “I’d say that the timely arrival of Miklos’ herald tends to confirm their story. The question now becomes, is Miklos acting alone, or for King Arion, or for Marek of Festil, as he has in the past?”
Uneasiness murmured around the table at that, for the prospect of an eventual Festillic bid to take back the throne of Gwynedd had loomed with increasing probability since 904, when Cinhil Haldane, the present king’s father, had ended a Festillic Interregnum of more than eighty years by ousting and killing the unmarried King Imre. There it might have ended, except that Imre’s sister, the Princess Ariella, had been carrying his child when she fled. Later legalists had tried to claim that the royal pregnancy derived from a dalliance with one of her brother’s courtiers, by then conveniently dead, for mere illegitimacy was not necessarily a bar to inheritance in Torenth, but everyone knew that Imre was the father.
The child born of this incestuous union the following year had been christened Mark Imre of Festil, though he now went by Marek, the Torenthi form of his name, and was accorded the title of prince among his Torenthi kinsmen. The House of Festil was descended from a cadet branch of the Torenthi royal line—Deryni, all—and Torenth had provided troops for Ariella’s unsuccessful attempt to take back the throne lost by her brother. Following her death in that endeavor, her son and heir had been brought up among the Deryni princes of Torenth, biding his time until conditions were right to make his own try for his parents’ throne. Prince Marek now was twenty-three, a year older than his Haldane rival in Rhemuth, recently married to a sister of the King of Torenth and lately the father of a son by her.
“I would think it very likely that Marek is, indeed, behind this,” Tammaron said thoughtfully. “Having said that, however, I am not altogether certain we can assume that this is a serious bid to take back the crown. Marek is yet unblooded. He has an heir, but just the one; and many’s the infant that dies young.”
“Yet Culliecairn has been taken,” Manfred pointed out.
“Yes, but I suspect Miklos has done it on Marek’s behalf,” Tammaron countered. “And I seriously doubt that King Arion supports it. He certainly doesn’t want a war with us right now, because he hasn’t got adult heirs yet either.
“No, I would guess this to be a drawing action, almost a field exercise, to see what we’ll do. Marek hasn’t the support to make a full-scale invasion and won’t until his heir is of age. I think he wants to flex his muscles and size up his enemy—and perhaps test to see whether it’s true, that the King of Gwynedd is not his own man.”
“Which means,” Hubert said, “that the king must be seen to be his own man, and a competent one, by riding with an expeditionary force to free Culliecairn. I’ll grant that there is some small risk, if he should take it in his head to actually try to lead,” he added, at the looks of objection forming on several faces. “On the other hand, he knows full well that if he should meet his death in such a campaign—for whatever reason—young Owain would become the next king, with the certainty of an actual and open regency until the boy reaches his majority.”
“I can’t say I’d mind a ten-year regency,” Manfred said, grinning as he leaned back in his chair.
“No, but the queen would,” Tammaron said. “And she’d sit on the regency council by right. Would her brother sit as well, Hubert? He’s the boy’s uncle; it’s customary.”
“The king, ah, has been persuaded not to name his brother-in-law to the regency council,” Hubert said, pretending to study a well-manicured thumbnail. “Something about concern for the young man’s health, I believe—the strain of the office, and so forth.”
“And it won’t be a strain to keep him on at court?” Rhun said archly. “If I’d had my way, he would have been killed six years ago.”
Hubert favored the younger man with a droll smile. “Fortunately for him, dear Rhun, you were away supervising another killing at the time. But rest assured that Sir Cathan understands the precarious nature of his position and will do nothing to jeopardize his access to his sister. Nor will she do anything that might endanger his life—or even worse, from her perspective, force us to forbid her access to her son. So long as both of them maintain the utmost discretion and circumspection, I am content that Cathan Drummond should remain in the royal household, if only for the sake of appearances. Besides that, his presence reassures the queen, who will bear stronger princes if her mind is at ease. ’Tis a small enough inconvenience, I think—and one that is open to immediate re
assessment, if either of them should abuse the privilege.”
Rhun snorted and shook his head. “I’d still rather he were dead.”
“That’s as may be, but at very least, nothing must happen to him during the queen’s pregnancy. Do I make myself quite clear?”
“You do.”
“Good. Because whatever else happens, she carries the second Haldane heir, our backup for Prince Owain. Worry about that, if you insist upon worrying about something. Whether or not the king survives this current crisis, Michaela could die in childbed—or worse, the child might die. And if the king should die, whether on a campaign into Eastmarch or as a result of his own folly, the shock could cause her to miscarry again; it happened before.”
“Aye,” Tammaron breathed. “So all Haldane hopes ultimately hang on one small four-year-old.”
“Precisely. For that reason, and to prevent the boy being brought untimely to the crown, I rather think that the king, his lady wife, and her brother will continue to do whatever we require of them.”
Hubert’s words brought nods of agreement. That the king was a devoted father was hardly any secret, but of the five men seated around the council table, the archbishop perhaps knew the king best of any of them. Though Tammaron and Rhun had been among the original regents appointed to rule Gwynedd during the minority of King Alroy, Rhys Michael’s sickly eldest brother, it was Hubert who, because of his office, had been in a unique position both to interact with the three Haldane princes himself and to require detailed reporting from the priests who were the princes’ teachers and confessors.
Nor had his influence ended with the end of the regency. For it was also Hubert who, with Paulin of Ramos, had been responsible for the plot that eventually put Rhys Michael on the throne. Accordingly, Hubert’s opinion held weight in proportion to his physical size, among these men who shared with him the governing of Gwynedd.
“Well, then,” Manfred said, “I suppose we’d better let the king receive Prince Miklos’ herald.”
“Indeed, yes,” Hubert replied. “I’d already informed him of the news from Eastmarch. Before court is convened, I shall be certain that he understands both the political and personal implications of any independent action he might contemplate and that he knows precisely what is expected of him.”
CHAPTER TWO
Be not deceived: evil communications corrupt good manners.
—I Corinthians 15:34
Following Hubert’s second briefing, the king could harbour no illusions regarding what was expected of him. As he dressed for Court, however, he reflected that he probably understood the implications of the coming audience far better than any of his great lords supposed.
Still a little stunned, nonetheless, he considered his situation as he crossed the fronts of a clean white shirt his body squire had just put on him, stuffing the tails into the waist of close-fitting black breeches and then holding out his arms for the sleeves to be fastened at the wrists.
At least the afternoon was mild, not at all like that other June, when his brother Alroy lay dying and his brother Javan had come back to Court, forever changing the destiny of the fourteen-year-old Prince Rhys Michael Alister Haldane. Seven years had passed since then, and Rhys Michael had been king for six of them—king in name, at least.
For now he knew, though he had not wanted to believe it at the time, that Javan’s own great lords had conspired to be rid of him, the king they could not control, and to set Rhys Michael in his place. It had cost the youngest of the Haldane princes his innocence and the lives of his brother and the child who would have been his own firstborn son. It had also cost him his freedom for the future and sentenced whatever further progeny he might engender to a life dictated by the great lords. As King Rhys, he now came and went at their behest, all but worn down by the intervening years of subjugation, both physical and mental, with even the thought of further resistance almost battered into resignation and acceptance of what they required, if he wished to survive.
This latest development might not set too well with their long-range plans, though. Already, a faint pang of hope had flared in his breast, where he had thought all chance of deliverance nearly stifled.
He had a fair idea what the waiting Torenthi herald would say, based on Hubert’s briefing and the news brought earlier by the Eastmarch messengers. The seizure of Culliecairn, with its castle and garrison and town, could not be tolerated. Culliecairn guarded the Torenth-side entrance to the Coldoire Pass, the most direct route through the northern Rhelljan Mountains between Eastmarch and the Torenthi Duchy of Tolan. Hubert had already mentioned the likelihood of an immediate campaign to free Culliecairn, even conceding that it probably would be necessary for Rhys Michael to go along. The king had been forbidden to make any official commitment without first clearing it with his advisors—which rankled, as such constraints always did; but the developing scenario also reminded Rhys Michael most pointedly that he was still an anointed king.
At least they had never forbidden him to look like a king. Indeed, they demanded it, whenever they trotted him out for some state occasion that required his official presence. The great lords approved of keeping up appearances. The body squire kneeling at his feet had given his boots a final buff with a soft cloth and now was buckling golden spurs to his heels.
“Beg pardon, Sire,” his senior aide murmured, easing past the squire with a plain white belt in his hands.
Faintly bemused, the king lifted both arms away from his sides to allow it. Dark-haired and dark-eyed, Sir Fulk Fitz-Arthur was several years his junior, obliging and loyal enough in most things, but loyal first to his father, Lord Tammaron, if pushed to a choice. Rhys Michael tried to avoid forcing that choice whenever possible, for he honestly liked Fulk and sensed that the liking was mutual; but not for an instant did he believe that mere fondness might make Fulk overlook forbidden deviations from what the great lords permitted.
Far more certain was the loyalty of his other aide, who was shaking out a scarlet over-robe over in the better light of an open window. A year younger than Fulk, and brother to Rhys Michael’s beloved Michaela, Sir Cathan Drummond had been a towheaded squire of twelve on that awful day of the coup, witness to much of the slaughter, nearly a victim himself, and as helpless as Rhys Michael to prevent any of it.
Fortunately, the great lords had stopped short of killing the queen’s brother the way they had so many others of those loyal to the Haldanes. After several months’ confinement following the coup, upon giving his solemn oath never to speak of what he had witnessed that day, Cathan had been permitted to return to the royal household, the token member actually to be chosen by the new king and queen and the only person, other than themselves, on whom they could always and utterly rely.
It had not taken Cathan long to discover what he must do in order to stay alive, even if he was the queen’s brother. Grudgingly permitted to resume his training in arms, as well as the gentler accomplishments expected of noble young men headed toward knighthood, he had quickly learned not to do too well at anything that might suggest a threat to those who were the true masters at Rhemuth Castle. His eventual knighting, the previous Twelfth Night, had been one of the few acts as king that Rhys Michael had performed gladly, of his own volition. Permission to appoint Cathan as a second aide had been an unexpected dividend of the evening, though the king suspected expediency rather than charity to have been Hubert’s motive. Now a belted knight as well as brother to the queen, Cathan was least apt to cause trouble if he continued directly in the royal household, where he could be watched. It kept Cathan himself under scrutiny, but at least it allowed Rhys Michael an adult confidant and ally besides his wife.
As if sensing the king’s fond gaze upon him, Cathan came smiling now to lay the scarlet over-robe around his sovereign’s shoulders. The fronts were stiff with gold embroidery, as were the wide cuffs of the sleeves, and the broad clasp Cathan snapped closed across the chest resembled the morse of a bishop’s cope. He had pinned to the robe??
?s left shoulder a large, fist-sized brooch with the golden lion of Gwynedd embossed upon it, the background inlaid in crimson enamel—Michaela’s gift to the king on the birth of little Prince Owain. For the three of them, it had come to symbolize their hopes of a House of Haldane no longer fettered by the great lords.
Blessing Cathan for having thought of it, especially today, Rhys Michael let his fingertips brash the brooch in passing as he adjusted the hang of a flowing sleeve, knowing Cathan would catch the significance. Fulk had turned away briefly to fetch a burnished metal mirror, so missed the gesture entirely.
“A good choice, Sire,” Fulk declared, as he angled the mirror to reflect the royal image.
“Yes, I thought so.”
Critically the king studied the overall effect, nervously ruffling one hand through the short-cropped black cap of his hair as he turned to view himself from several angles. He would have preferred to wear his hair longer, perhaps pulled back in a queue or braid, but for some reason the great lords insisted that he keep it short—almost clerical in its severity, though without the shaved tonsure. He had often wondered why—further assertion of their control over every aspect of his life, he suspected. But it sometimes had occurred to him to wonder whether they thought that, as with Samson, they could keep him from gaining strength by cutting his hair.
At least the stark barbering let the Eye of Rom be seen. The great ruby glowering in his right earlobe had belonged to his father and both his brothers before him and was regarded as part of the official regalia of Gwynedd. King Cinhil had been the first Haldane to wear the stone, but the men who eventually became the great lords of Gwynedd remained unaware that it had been given to Cinhil by the Deryni mage later to be known as Saint Camber. Ancient tradition, likewise unknown to the great lords, identified the stone as one of the gifts of the Magi to the Christ Child, later sold to finance the flight to Egypt. Whether or not that was true, Rhys Michael regarded it as one of his few true links with the kingship he feared he might never wield in fact.