Camber the Heretic (31 page)

Among those only Michaeline-trained, however, without the formal guidance and protection of the Order, there were far fewer options available, especially to men with families to support. As a consequence, many of these of Jebediah's officers simply disappeared, taking their families with them into Torenth, Forcinn, Llannedd, Howicce, and further lands where others unlike the Festils had left gentler memories of Deryni living among them, and where no one knew of their former Deryni connections. Human and Deryni alike, they went, taking some of the finest military minds of their generation out of Gwynedd forever. Jebediah regretted their going, but he could not, in conscience, bid them stay. At least in foreign lands, they might have a chance to survive unmolested.

Domestically, too, there were changes in Gwynedd, beginning slowly in the weeks right after Cinhil's death. Deryni household retainers and officers at Court, never really numerous even under Cinhil, were gradually given leave to return to their homes, as new human replacements were rotated in. Rhys and Evaine, most prominent of the Deryni formerly in Cinhil's personal service, were among the first to be dismissed, with the excuse that they deserved lives of their own after so many years of faithful service; but it was clear that if Deryni were no longer desired at Court, then the daughter and son-in-law of a Deryni saint were doubly unwelcome.

So Rhys and Evaine moved out of the quarters in the castle which they had occupied intermittently for the past twelve years and took up temporary residence at Rhys's townhouse in Valoret, the house he had bought as a young Healer and had maintained through the years as a hostelry for Healer's apprentices. Periodically, they travelled back to Sheele to see the two younger children and check on the new tutor they had hired. There, during one idyllic week in mid-May, they conceived their fourth child—a daughter, to be born early the following year. But they would not return to Sheele permanently so long as Camber still lodged in the archbishop's palace by the cathedral—and Camber could not leave until after the new king's coronation late in May.

Rhys's departure from Court left the post of royal physician vacant, but the regents chose to fill it with two human physicians. Humans, they said, could tend the young king's colds and other ailments just as well as Deryni, for in treatment of illnesses, magic had little edge over medical knowledge. It was in the Healing of physical injury that the Healers were clearly superior—and in that eventuality, the regents still had Tavis O'Neill.

Not that they wanted him. He was Deryni, after all. But given Prince Javan's proclivity for throwing tantrums which made him ill, whenever the possibility of Tavis's leaving was even mentioned, the regents decided it best to wait at least until after the coronation to resolve the issue. Javan must appear to be the picture of princely decorum on his brother's coronation day.

Besides, Tavis was among the most inoffensive of Deryni, never having shown evidence of any but Healing abilities for as long as anyone could remember. He might almost be human, were it not for the Healing gift. And as Bishop Hubert grudgingly pointed out, though the state of Tavis's soul might definitely be in question because of his Deryni birth, at least he was only using his magic for good, for Healing. And so Tavis stayed, if rather closely watched.

Archbishop Jaffray also stayed, even more closely watched—tolerated because he must be, at least for the present. However, the archbishop's aides, human and Deryni, and even minor members of the human Court were already warning him to guard himself—that the regents desired nothing less than his terminal illness or fatal accident, so that death might oust him from the regency council, since they could not.

But Jaffray flourished, despite their ill wishes, and continued to report regularly to the Camberian Council on the regents' latest plans, at least so far as these were discussed with the full council and not just among the regents themselves.

One topic which came to be discussed with alarming regularity, though nothing serious had yet come of it, was the regents' increasing awareness of the roving bands of young Deryni such as Camber and Joram had encountered on the road near Dolban. The regents did not know of that particular incident; but they knew of the one involving Hubert's brother. Fortunately, even Manfred had not been able to allege more than rowdiness and lewd conduct, but God knew what the summer might bring, after the excitement of the coronation was past and life settled down to a new and more restricted routine. The regents were already talking of harsher measures.

The problem was not unique to the Deryni, though it was most apparent among their numbers. The position of younger sons had never been a strong one, and traditionally these men had ended up as clerics or soldiers or, if they were fortunate enough to gain some kind of inheritance, rakes and men-about-town. Some few managed to win titles on their own merit, but opportunities for this kind of advancement were rare, especially in times of peace.

Under the guise of rotating appointments and positions at Court, the regents had shifted the human-Deryni balance of the Court from a nearly half-and-half arrangement to more than three-quarters human, in scarcely three months. Deryni who had patiently waited their turns to serve the Crown under Cinhil, and who depended upon royal stipends for part of their income, now found themselves without employment and without preferment—yet they were still expected to fulfill their feudal obligations of military service, tithe and tax, and peacekeeping in their areas. This Michaelmas, at the end of the summer would see not only the traditional tithes come due, but also a set of new taxes. The regents had already informed the peerage, human and Deryni, to be prepared for that.

Such developments did not set well with many Deryni. And chief among those who were less discreet than they should have been about their dissatisfaction were the bands of Deryni younger sons who now began to roam the countryside, short of funds as well as bored and unfulfilled.

In fact, there were probably no more than one hundred or so of these impetuous young men, comprising perhaps half a dozen bands; but they were conspicuous for being Deryni, and most still had sufficient connections of family, name, and title to ensure that disciplinary action was never carried out. Who were local sheriffs and constables to argue with the sons of earls and barons? These officers complained, but they had not yet been given the authority to deal with the problem.

Increasingly, during the months before Alroy's coronation, Jaffray brought his fears to the Camberian Council, and increasingly, Davin and Ansel and Jesse reported that they were doing the best they could; but three young men and Gregory, their mentor, simply could not be everywhere at once, even by delegating some of their patrol duties to their sworn men. Little more could be done on the Council's behalf without risking exposure of their existence—and that, no human must ever know.

Alroy Bearand Brion Haldane was crowned on his twelfth birthday, in a festival to celebrate both the installation of the new king and the coming of spring after the long and dismal winter. His father had run an austere and conservative court, but the regents had decreed that this was not to be the case for young King Alroy. Amazing things had been planned for the amusement of the king and his brothers, once the solemnities of the coronation were over, not the least of which were a tournament and a great fair. By comparison with these latter events, a coronation seemed tame. The boys could hardly wait until Alroy's crowning was past and they could get on with more exciting things.

The boys' day began early. Alroy and his brothers were roused for morning prayers and baths—but not breakfast—and then separated so that Alroy might be drilled a final time for his part in the ceremony. While the royal dressers clad him in his coronation robes of white and gold, the boy was made to rehearse his lines to the exacting satisfaction of Bishop Hubert, who had been tutoring all three children exhaustively for the past month.

Alroy was pensive but letter-perfect as he repeated the words he had been taught. Too pensive, as Hubert later complained to his fellow regents. The boy had actually asked the bishop whether he thought that Alroy would make a good and wise king. Hubert, of course, had assured him that he would, especially if he heeded the advice of his counselors, but the bishop was not pleased; it would not do for the boy to get the idea that he really was king, so long as the regents ruled.

The coronation procession left the castleyard precisely at Terce, led by a troop of household guards in the livery of Gwynedd and then by every peer of the realm who had managed to get to Valoret for the occasion—nearly fifty in all, human and Deryni, though of the latter there were far fewer than Camber had hoped. Davin, Earl of Culdi, rode among them, with Ansel at his side; a tense Earl Gregory rode with his sons; and Baron Torcuill de la Marche, who had just returned from his eastern estates and looked as if he wished he were back there.

But most of the rest were human, Camber noticed, as the procession neared the cathedral steps where he and Jaffray and Bishop Hubert waited. Many of the most powerful and influential Deryni of the kingdom simply had not come!

With a sinking feeling in his heart, Camber shifted the heavy fabric of the cope on his shoulders—the vestments Cinhil had given him so many years before—and watched the first of the procession begin to dismount and file into the cathedral. Some of the absences he could have predicted; and some of those not in the procession were already inside, like Rhys and Evaine. But this poor a showing had been quite unforeseen—almost a slap in the face to the regents by those of his race. He prayed fervently that the regents would be too occupied to notice the slight, but he knew the prayer to be but wishful thinking. The regents would notice. Even if Murdoch did not, Tammaron or Rhun would. Or Hubert.

He glanced sidelong at the corpulent Hubert standing opposite Jaffray and saw that the bishop-regent had already noticed. The tiny rosebud lips were set in a petulant pout of disapproval, and occasionally the cherubic face would turn slightly to dictate a few terse words to a clark lurking by his right elbow. The page on which the man wrote was dark down nearly half its length.

Joram, what is that man writing?
Camber sent mentally to his son, who was standing just behind him and Jaffray, and in a much better position to see.

Names
, Joram's mind whispered in Camber's.
He's making a list of those in the procession. What do you want to bet that there's someone inside, too, taking notes on those already seated?

No bet
, Camber responded.
Are Evaine and Rhys in their places?

Yes
.

Thank God for that
, Camber thought to himself.
Go inside and see. If the regents are making lists, then we'd better do the same, so we can warn those who didn't show up. I can understand their distaste, but in this case, I can't help wishing they'd been a little less principled
.

Dom Emrys is inside with the Gabrilites
, Joram returned.
Shall I ask him to make note? He won't have to write it down, and I can reach him without arousing suspicion
.

Camber nodded, recalling that the Abbot of the Gabrilites had a perfect memory. Then he gestured for Joram to bend closer.

“Joram, would you please bring me some water?” he asked, for the benefit of any listening ears. “An old man like me shouldn't be expected to last through a long ceremony like this, without refreshment.”

“Right away, Your Grace,” Joram replied with a bow, his face solemnly belying his momentary amusement.

As he backed off, to merge with the peers filing inside, the first of the royal party entered the cathedral close, to the accompaniment of a trumpet fanfare and a roll of drums. First came the king's brothers on matched chestnuts, led by Earls Hrorik and Sighere, crimson-clad and wearing silver princes' circlets on their heads. Behind them, Ewan bore the great sword of Gwynedd, which had been Cinhil's, and Murdoch the royal banner.

Finally came the king, bareheaded and looking very young and vulnerable as he sat his tall, albino stallion. Earl Tammaron, the new chancellor, led the boy's mount, curbing the animal's proud prancing with a white leather lead that shone in the sunlight. Rhun of Horthness walked on the other side of the king's horse with one hand on the bridle, hardly able to keep the sneer of triumph off his angular face.

The sunlight glittered almost as brightly from the jewelled surcoats and coronets of the regents as it did from the king's town royal robes, and flashed from chains of gold, silver spurs, and raiment stiff with embroidery such as no mere subject had worn in decades—only kings and clergy.

As the king's robes were adjusted a final time and his long white mantle arranged to trail gracefully behind him, four earls' sons stepped into place with the canopy of cloth-of-gold, shading the boy from the bright spring sun. As the cathedral doors were thrown open a final time to admit the royal party, the choir of the
Ordo Verbi Dei
broke into the traditional strains of the coronation hymn:

“
I was glad when they said unto me, let us go into the house of the Lord!
”

The coronation party began to move down the nave: first the choir monks in their burgundy habits, singing as they processed; then a full dozen altar boys in hooded white robes, scarlet-sashed, each bearing a taper in a bright-reflecting silver holder.

A lone thurifer came next in the procession, his censer spewing a cloud of sweet incense smoke which hung in the air where he passed and through which the ornate processional cross of the Primate of Gwynedd seemed to float almost unsupported by the young deacon who bore it. Archbishop Jaffray followed the cross, accompanied by his chaplain and a second deacon, and behind him walked Archbishop Oriss of Rhemuth and his attendants. Both archbishops wore heavy copes of white and gold, stiff with embroidery and appliqué; and the jewel-encrusted miters of their offices, rich as any crowns, carried the carved and gilded croziers which proclaimed them shepherds of their flocks.