The Bishop’s Heir

  And when de Nore himself retired to the sacristy with the abbot and a half-fainting Jorian, who had to be supported by Oriolt and Father Riordan, the Master of Novices, Denis knew something was dreadfully wrong. Could it be that God had struck down Jorian?

  Denis did not want to believe that, but what other explanation could there be? Jorian was not a fainter. Nor had he been at all out of sorts earlier in the morning, while Denis helped him vest. And in Jorian’s year as a deacon, essentially a junior priest-in-training, he certainly had assisted with Communion often enough for that not to have shaken his composure, solemn an office though it was.

  The only other conclusion possible was that Jorian’s collapse did have something to do with him being Deryni. God had struck him down, just as the legends said; and as Denis’ turn came to go forward and receive Communion, he wondered whether God would strike him, too, for even being a party to Jorian’s transgression.

  But though the consecrated wafer Denis received from Father Gorony seemed drier than usual and stuck in his throat as he made his way back to his place, no divine wrath struck him. Nor, however, had he just been ordained a priest in defiance of Holy Church.

  He worried about Jorian all through the rest of the Mass, aching to know what was going on. The archbishop soon came out of the sacristy with Oriolt and resumed administering Communion as if nothing had happened, but Father Darby went back to take his place; and it was Father Gorony who performed the Ablutions after Communion was over, while de Nore disappeared into the sacristy again for a little while.

  Jorian did not come out to give his first blessings with the other new priests, either, and only members of the archbishop’s staff were allowed in the sacristy after Mass was over. Nor did Jorian appear afterward at the celebratory feast in the refectory hall—though the archbishop came in about halfway though, still minus his chaplain and Father Darby.

  Neither archbishop nor abbot had any announcement about Jorian at the feast, though they could not have been unaware how speculation was spreading among the guests and seminarians in the relaxed atmosphere permitted by suspension of the Rule of Silence on a feast day. Nor did anyone dare to ask. But when the school gathered for Vespers that evening, outside visitors no longer among their number, a tight-lipped and shaken-looking Abbot Calbert came into the pulpit after the service and called for their attention.

  “My dear sons in Christ, it is my most painful duty to inform you concerning Jorian de Courcy,” he said, his tone and the omission of Jorian’s new title conveying chill dread to the listening Denis. “I have not been unaware of your concern. I wish I could tell you that Jorian is well—or even that he is dead. Unfortunately, I can do neither. For Jorian de Courcy, unknown to us before today, has been found to be a Deryni spy in our midst.”

  The disclosure was made dispassionately, with little inflection, but every man and boy in the church gasped. Denis, fighting down a panic that, unchecked, could have triggered a mindless and fatal bolt for escape, used his Deryni talents to force outward calm upon his body so that his reaction seemed no more than any of the others around him, but the clasped hands he raised to his lips in hurried prayer for Jorian were white­knuckled. As whispered reaction among the students shifted to louder speculation, Calbert held up a hand for silence, which was given immediately.

  “No, none of us suspected before today. The Deryni are skilled in the arts of deception—but even Deryni magic could not deceive the Lord of Hosts! God has struck down Jorian de Courcy for his pride and disobedience, and God’s servants will see that justice is done. Tomorrow, de Courcy will be taken to Valoret for trial before the archbishop’s tribunal. Some of you may be asked to make deposition concerning his record here at Arx Fidei, for it is unthinkable that a Deryni should have penetrated this close to the Sacred Mysteries.”

  They were all but forbidden to speak of it further among themselves, but after Compline later that night, when everyone was supposed to be abed, Denis joined several other seniors just outside the dorter to question the newly ordained Father Oriolt, who alone, besides the archbishop’s staff and the abbot himself, had seen what transpired in the sacristy after Jorian was spirited away.

  “I don’t know what happened,” Oriolt was saying, as Denis eased closer to hear his whispered account more clearly. “I thought he’d just gotten lightheaded from the excitement, and from fasting since yesterday. I know I felt a little giddy. That wine the archbishop uses is potent on an empty stomach.”

  “But, why did he call out for help?” asked Benjamin, one of the seniors who had been serving at the altar and who, like Denis and most of the rest of those gathered, was due to be ordained in the spring, with the next crop of new priests.

  Denis cautiously extended his Truth-Reading ability as young Oriolt shook his head and answered.

  “I don’t know. He was feeling dizzy. He could hardly walk. He almost vomited after we got him into the sacristy. I got his vestments off as fast as I could, figuring the heat might have gotten to him; but he was trembling like a leaf, and his pupils were huge.

  “De Nore said we should try to give him some more wine, but that didn’t seem to help. I was afraid he was going into convulsions, except that he passed out then. That’s when de Nore told me to come back into the sanctuary with him, and that Father Darby would stay with Jorian while we finished the Mass. Apparently Darby’s had training as a physician.”

  Some of the others asked Oriolt a few more brief questions, but the priest had already told everything he saw, and Denis knew it was the truth as Oriolt had perceived it. All of them soon dispersed to go back to their beds, for it technically was forbidden to speak during the Great Silence of the night Offices, but Denis lay staring at the ceiling for well over an hour, a growing suspicion gnawing at the edge of his mind as he considered what he had learned. The symptoms Oriolt had described sounded almost like poisoning, or—

  Merasha! It was a Deryni substance, and not generally known to non-Deryni, but merasha could have produced Jorian’s distress. Merasha was a powerful mind-muddling drug that the Deryni themselves had developed to control their own, centuries before. It acted only as a mild sedative in humans, but for Deryni, in even minute doses, it produced dizziness, nausea, and loss of physical coordination and it totally disrupted the ability to concentrate or to use the psychic powers ordinarily accessible to one of their race. Denis had been given the drug several times in the course of his advanced training, so he might recognize its effects and learn how to minimize them if ever it were used against him by an enemy; but even a trained response could not totally cancel out the resultant symptom—sand Jorian had not been well trained. Denis doubted his friend had ever even experienced merasha disruption before.

  But if Jorian had been dosed with merasha, how had it been done? Could the Church hierarchy somehow have learned of Deryni susceptibility to the drug and used it as their screening device for the priesthood, knowing it would be harmless to human candidates—and fatally revealing of Deryni who so presumed? Was “God’s will” actually the Church’s will that Deryni not serve as priests, thereby continuing to extend the restrictions laid upon the race in fearful backlash after the Haldane Restoration?

  Suddenly he suspected how it had been done, too: the sacramental wine! Oriolt had commented that the wine the archbishop used was very potent. The implication was that the archbishop had brought his own—which, on the surface, was not at all illogical, since a bishop, traveling from parish to parish in the course of his duties, was apt to encounter any number of inferior vintages.

  But if, by supplying his own, slightly adulterated vintage, a bishop might indulge a discriminating palate and also ensure that no Deryni slipped past God’s will and got ordained—or, if a Deryni were ordained, he would not leave the altar without being revealed …

  It had to be the wine. And de Nore had given it to Jorian twice—no, three times: twice from his own chalice and once in the sacristy, though at least the latter had not been consecrated. It
was a scandalous, if not sacrilegious, misuse of the Sacrament the wine conferred, but it certainly would serve the aims of a human ecclesiastical hierarchy irrational with fear of Deryni and smug with the power that their exclusive access to the priesthood and episcopate ensured.

  Denis shivered over the implications of his theory for several minutes, huddling miserably under the thin blanket on his bed, not wanting to believe it. If it was true, though, he had to know—and then figure out a way to circumvent it—for his own ordination was only six months away. He tried not to think about what would happen to Jorian, who had not been so fortunate. Racking his brain to remember who had been responsible for setup in the sacristy that morning, Denis conjured the faces of two of the younger subdeacons. One of them slept in another dormitory, but the other was a friend of his, one Elgin de Torres, snoring softly only a few beds down from Denis.

  Scanning the long room carefully to make sure no one else was awake beside himself, Denis rose stealthily, slipped a church cape over his night robe, and glided silently to Elgin’s bed. He knelt slowly at its head, grimacing as one of his knees popped, and cautiously touched one forefinger lightly to the sleeping Elgin’s forehead just between the eyes, extending subtle control across the link thus formed.

  Elgin, did Archbishop de Nore bring his own wine for Mass today? he asked, demanding the answer only as a thought—not words.

  Immediately the memory of Elgin’s time in the sacristy surfaced—images of de Nore’s chaplain unpacking sumptuous vestments, a jeweled chalice and paten, and a common enough looking flask from which he filled the wine cruet that would go on the altar.

  So! De Nore had brought his own wine! That didn’t necessarily mean that it had been drugged with merasha, but it could have been. And all four of the newly ordained priests had drunk from the archbishop’s chalice at communion.

  But had the merasha actually been in the wine already, when Gorony decanted it into the cruet, or was it added later? Or it could have been added to the water cruet—in emotional terms, not as serious a profaning of the sacrament as tainting the wine, but the effect would be the same. Denis wondered whether, when Jorian had been given to drink wine a third time in the sacristy, they had used school wine or wine from de Nore’s personal supply—for that would answer the question regarding the water—but only Oriolt could tell him that, of those he might safely ask, and Oriolt had already gone to bed and was inaccessible, and would be leaving early in the morning to take up his new assignment as a priest.

  Still, wine or water made little difference. Merasha in the sacrificial cup was diabolical: ultimate betrayal in the very sacrament the newly ordained priest had just been empowered to celebrate. It was akin to the horror story of poisoned baptismal salt used by a rogue priest to murder an infant Haldane prince, around the time of Restoration. Denis would never forget his shock, the first time he’d heard of that.

  Only, this was even more monstrous, to Denis’s way of thinking, for it put the principal sacrament of the Church into question, if only for would-be Deryni clergy. Only priests and bishops received both the bread and the wine at communion—thank God for that, else no Deryni would ever dare to approach the altar rail for the solace and grace the sacrament conferred.

  But with merasha in the cup, no Deryni priest could slip through that first, concelebrated Mass with his ordaining bishop without being betrayed. No wonder there were no Deryni priests, and had been none for all these years. How could a priestly candidate avoid—or know to avoid—the very sacrament for which he had sought to be ordained?

  Denis shuddered as he withdrew from Elgin’s mind, erasing all trace of his tampering as he deepened the younger man’s sleep. He needed confirmation of his suspicion. If he could sneak into the sacristy without interference, perhaps he could find some clue to what had happened there—in the cruets, perhaps, if they had not gotten washed properly or at all, in the confusion and disruption of usual procedures following Jorian’s apprehension.

  It had to be tonight, though, or tomorrow’ s students assigned to sacristy duty would obliterate whatever faint hints their fellows might have left today. Denis was safe enough as far as the sanctuary, for seminarians of deacon and subdeacon rank had the privilege of going into the church to pray at any time, even during the Great Silence of the early morning hours. But if he were caught in the sacristy, he would have some quick explaining to do—especially with Jorian having just been found out that day.

  But he had to take that chance. For if drugged wine was the key to the hierarchy’s screening process to keep Deryni out of the priesthood, rather than direct divine intervention, then Denis or his mentors might be able to figure out a way around it. And if they couldn’t, then Denis’s only choices were either to risk the same fate as Jorian, or else to drop out of Arx Fidei and disappear altogether, his public usefulness as a secret Deryni forever compromised.

  His mission to the sacristy appeared to be doomed from the start, however—at least for tonight. For when he slipped quietly down the night stairs and into the south transept, pausing in shadow to scan the front of the church, two of his classmates were already kneeling in the dim-lit choir stalls. And Father Riordan, the Master of Novices, was just coming down from the altar steps to approach them.

  Damn! All Denis needed was for Riordan to tell him to go back to bed, as he apparently was telling the other two in the choir, through silent signal. Denis would not be obliged to go, even if Riordan told him to, but refusal would only create suspicion where none yet existed. He wondered whether the novice master at least might be persuaded to break Silence and tell him something about Jorian—through purely conventional means of encouragement, of course—but he knew he would not dare to press the question if Riordan was not feeling talkative. Even now, Riordan was shooing his two truant students back toward the night stair in the transept—and toward Denis.

  Fortunately, however, Riordan’s mood seemed at least a little indulgent tonight, judging by the faces of Denis’s two classmates who bowed as they passed, on the way back to their dormitory as instructed. And Riordan himself nodded sympathetically to Denis as he saw him and came closer, though he was already raising a hand to signal him to leave.

  Denis put on what he hoped was one of his most sorrowful and troubled expressions as he bowed to the novice master, hands tucked modestly in the sleeves of his robe, hoping to make the most of his reputation as one of the school’s brighter and more devout students.

  “Forgive me for breaking silence, Father, but I couldn’t sleep,” he whispered. “I’ve been praying for Jorian de Courcy’s soul. Can—can you tell me what will happen to him?”

  Riordan stopped and crossed his arms on his chest, breathing out perplexedly.

  “You know that breaking silence is forbidden, Denis.”

  “I’ll accept whatever penance you require, Father,” Denis murmured dutifully, averting his eyes briefly as he clasped his hands at chest level. “But I—helped him vest this morning, before …” He swallowed. “I’ve been thinking about his soul. I thought perhaps my humble prayers might help bring him to contrition for what he has done.”

  Sighing wearily, Riordan turned to glance back toward the altar, at the great, life-sized crucifix suspended above it, the pale figure of the Crowned King on the Tree lit red by the Presence lamp that burned before the tabernacle.

  “I know, son. I’ve been praying for him, too,” Riordan murmured. “I don’t see how I could have been so wrong about him. He seemed to have such a strong vocation, to be so—”

  Riordan shook his bead bewilderedly and sighed again. “In any case, they’re already taken him to Valoret. If it goes as it usually does, they’ll bring him back here for execution in a month or two.”

  Execution … the stake …

  Denis shivered and bowed his head over his clasped hands, closing his eyes against the thought, but the image sprang up stronger still in his imagination. He had seen a man burn once, when he was only a young boy.

&nbs
p; “I know,” he heard Riordan murmur—and flinched as the priest’s hand came to rest heavily on his shoulder. “It’s a terrible way to die. You mustn’t dwell on it. There can be only one consolation: that the flames will cleanse him of his sins. And perhaps the prayers of those who knew only his nobler side will help to engage Our Lord’s mercy when Jorian comes before the Throne of Judgement.”

  Denis knew Riordan meant well, but it was all he could do not to despise the man for his pious repetition of the same platitudes humans had been mouthing about Deryni for two centuries. He stumbled back to his bed almost blind with tears of rage that he prayed Riordan would attribute to his sensitive nature. He sobbed into his pillow for a long time before he finally drifted into uneasy sleep for the few hours remaining before Lauds.

  More than a week passed before Denis finally found legitimate cause to be in the sacristy alone, washing cruets and sorting linens after a weekday Mass. By then, of course, no trace remained of the mischief of the ordination Mass. Nor had he expected any.

  A week after that, however, Denis was able to convey his suspicions to his older brother Jamyl, come to visit him one balmy Sunday afternoon. Sir Jamyl Arilan was a rising luminary at court: friend and confidant of young King Brion Haldane, a newly appointed member of Brion’s council of state, and, unbeknownst even to Brion, a Deryni of extremely thorough training. Jamyl had other powerful friends besides those at court, too—very highly placed Deryni connections who commanded even the men who had taught the two Arilan brothers in secret. Denis hoped Jamyl might enlist their aid in his behalf.

  “Sweet Jesu. Den, if this were coming from anyone but you, I wouldn’t believe it,” Jamyl muttered under his breath, when Denis had imparted all he knew about Jorian’s betrayal through words and psychic recall. “What you’ve described is incredible—and, if true, nearly impossible to counter without subverting the staff of every bishop in Gwynedd. Maybe you should just give it up.”