Childe Morgan (13 page)

Iris Jessilde nodded her agreement as she shook out folds of the blue gown's long skirt. The undergown worn in summer was of white linen rather than the white wool worn in winter. Alazais brushed her fingertips along the fall of pale blue sleeve and looked up shyly at her stepmother.

“How do I look?” she murmured.

“You look beautiful, darling,” Alyce said, coming to give her a gentle hug—carefully, lest she crush the floral wreath.

Very soon they were following the two sisters along the cloister walk to the side door of the chapel, under its rainbow-painted arch and into the brilliance of the white marble chapel, where its rose windows cast broad swaths of rainbow-colored light across the interior.

A sweet song of welcome met their arrival—the
Salve Regina
, as Alyce now knew—its subtle harmonies and a breath of incense and honey-sweet beeswax candles enfolding them in peace as they trod the rainbow-striped carpet runner laid along the center aisle. Beyond the choir lay the high altar, ablaze with votive lights shielded with glass in all the colors of the rainbow. Before it, Mother Iris Judiana sat on a backless stool, flanked by two senior sisters.

Passing into the choir, between the ranks of center-facing choir stalls, they came at last to the foot of the altar steps, where Mother Iris Judiana had risen to receive them. She gave a graceful nod in response to the curtsies of the two younger women, then held out her arms in welcome to Alyce, who accepted her brief embrace and then stepped back to present the new arrival, as Lady Jessamy MacAthan had presented her and Marie so long ago.

“Mother Iris Judiana, I have the honor to present my stepdaughter, the Lady Alazais Morgan, youngest daughter of the Earl of Lendour. She has asked that she be received under the rainbow, so that she may learn the gentle arts suitable to her rank. Her father has given his permission and his blessing, as do I.”

“I am most pleased to receive her, dear Alyce,” Iris Judiana said, as she extended her hands to Alazais. “May she be a credit to this house and may she cleave cheerfully to its discipline. Let her now be enrolled under the favor and protection of Our Lady of the Rainbow, signifying the same by her signature in the great book of our house.”

So saying, she gestured toward a small table to the right of the choir, where two of the school's younger girls stood holding a rainbow-striped canopy above an open book. Sister Iris Rose stood behind the table with a quill pen and an inkwell, her brown eyes crinkling with good humor as they approached.

“Be welcome under the rainbow, Alazais,” she said, with a curtsy to the pair of them as Alyce led her stepdaughter before the book. The two girls holding the canopy were students, by their dress, with simple rainbow fillets binding plain white veils across their brows.

Smiling, Alyce nodded for Alazais to take the pen, remembering how she had hesitated to sign when first she came, for both she and her sister had feared that they might be coerced into taking unintended religious vows. Iris Rose must have remembered that day, for she smiled at Alyce as Alazais carefully signed her name. When the signing was completed, Iris Rose sanded the signature with pounce to stop it smudging, then carefully turned the signed pages back to where a slip of parchment marked a place much earlier in the volume.

“Here is where your sister signed, when
she
first came to us,” she said to Alazais, indicating Zoë's signature. She then turned forward several pages, to another marker. “And here are the names of Alyce and her sister.”

Alyce's breath caught as she read the shaky signature:
Marie Stephania de Corwyn,
and she smiled faintly as she let her fingertips trace over the line.

“Ah, dear Zaizie, you know so much more than
we
did, when we first came here,” she murmured. “We were afraid we might never be allowed to leave, that we would be forced to take the veil, locked away forever behind cloister walls. How wrong we were. It was probably the best thing that ever happened to us—though your father, I think, was probably the best thing ever to happen to
me
. And Alaric, of course.”

With a little sob, Alazais embraced her stepmother in a fierce gesture of genuine affection, tears in her eyes, then composed herself and stood tall at Alyce's side, nodding to Iris Rose.

“Thank you, Sister,” she murmured, as Alyce also murmured her thanks.

Then they were moving back before the altar, the canopy accompanying them, where Mother Iris Judiana bade Alazais to kneel, blessing her with holy water sprinkled from a sprig of fragrant pine, then signaling for two more waiting girls to bring a veil very like those worn by the canopy-bearers.

“Let this daughter be veiled according to the custom of this house,” she said, as Alyce removed the wreath of wildflowers and the two veil-bearers set the veil in place, the abbess herself binding it across the brow with the rainbow-plaited fillet.

After that, Mother Iris Judiana raised Alazais to her feet, kissed her on both cheeks, and herself conveyed the new student to the stall that henceforth would be her place in choir. Then, after a few general words of welcome, both to the new girl and the old, she dismissed the community to retire to the refectory, where a simple supper awaited students, sisters, and guests alike.

By then, it was far later than the long summer twilight would have suggested, such that the weary travelers soon retired to the rooms assigned them, and Alazais to meet her new schoolmates and be introduced to the girl chosen to share a room with her during her time at Arc-en-Ciel. All the rest of the Morgan relatives would leave to continue their journeys home the next morning, so Alyce availed herself of one last opportunity to spend some private time with her secret sister.

“This has been a very special time for me, despite what happened at Hallowdale,” Alyce murmured, climbing into the bed beside Vera when they had both seen their sons safely asleep at the other end of the room. She glanced around at the room, still light enough to see in the twilight, then snuggled closer to her sister.

“Did you remember that this was my bridal chamber, when Kenneth and I were wed?” she said with a sly grin in Vera's direction. “This may or may not be the actual marriage bed, but that was a time of happiness that I shall never forget.”

Vera smiled and settled the bedclothes closer under her chin, for the temperature was falling, here in the foothills north of Rhemuth. “Marriage does have much to recommend it, doesn't it?” she agreed. “I take it that you are hoping for another child.”

Alyce turned onto her back to stare at the ceiling overhead, suddenly sobered. “I think I may have lost one earlier this year, about the time you lost yours.”

“What?” Vera sat up to stare at her sister.

“Please don't be angry. I didn't tell you because you were already grieving, and I wasn't entirely certain I had actually conceived. But we mean to make it happen,” she said casually, “and the trying
is
agreeable.”

“Yes, it is, isn't it?” Vera agreed. Her impish smile reminded Alyce of the delicious late-night conversations that she, Vera, Marie, and Zoë had shared when all of them were unwed maidens, making their first tentative forays into the uncharted waters of their own womanhood. In particular, Alyce found herself remembering Marie—and Sé, who had loved her.

“Did I tell you that Sé made a brief appearance at the wedding?” she asked, turning her head to look at her sister.

“At Zoë's wedding?” Vera looked surprised. “
Did
he? I never saw him. What did he say? How did he look?”

Remembering, Alyce turned her face once again toward the ceiling.

“Leaner than when we last saw him, a bit more care-worn. He's taken his final vows with the Anvillers, Vera. He bears the marks. It was a very drastic thing to do, but somehow I think he made the right decision. He was shattered after Marie's death, but now he seems whole again.”

Vera went very still, also gazing up at the ceiling. “Then, it appears that he found a genuine vocation,” she murmured. “He's a very special man, Alyce. I hope you know that.”

“Oh, I do know,” she replied. “Even Kenneth recognizes it. If anything were ever to happen to him, I know that Sé would be there if I needed him. And he would be there for Alaric. That knowledge is comforting.”

“Indeed.” Vera yawned. “Dear me. I suppose we'd better get some sleep. The boys will wake at first light, which comes early. And we must be in the saddle right after morning Mass. Will you go back to Rhemuth tomorrow?”

Alyce shook her head, also yawning. “We shall stay another night, so that I can visit with Mother Judiana. I have much to tell her.” She smiled fondly. “She was very like a mother to Marie and me, while we were here. I—need to tell her about what we saw on the road…and what I very nearly did.”

At Vera's questioning glance in her direction, Alyce took her sister's hand and used the physical link to share her horror and outrage, and how she had longed to lash out with her power and destroy those who had murdered the three hapless Deryni at Hallowdale.

“It would have been very wrong, though,” she said, reverting to audible speech. “I could have undone whatever progress our race has made in the past several decades.”

“That's very true; you could have,” Vera replied briskly. “But you didn't. Granted, you thought about it—but you didn't do it. You needn't ask forgiveness merely for thinking. Mother Judiana surely will tell you that.”

Alyce shrugged and allowed herself a faint smile. “I suppose I just want to reassure myself that someone who is genuinely good, who wasn't there, understands my horror.”

“Dear Alyce, any sensible person with a jot of compassion in their soul would have been horrified,” Vera said sleepily. “It wasn't even human, what those villagers did to those people—whether or not they were Deryni, and whether or not they actually did anything wrong besides
be
Deryni. And I don't think any Deryni could do that to another living creature. We'd hear the anguish in our minds. In time, it would drive us mad. I only hope Kenneth can persuade the king to take action, make a serious inquiry. I certainly intend to tell Jared, when I get back to Culdi.”

“Do such things happen in Kierney or Cassan?” Alyce asked.

“Perhaps occasionally,” Vera admitted, “though I've never heard of such a case. But Deryni are better tolerated there. Not officially, but the mountain folk are said to have the Second Sight, which may not be all that different from some Deryni powers. Anyway, that seems to make the differences less obvious.” Her sigh turned into another yawn. “Your big problem in central Gwynedd is some of those bishops, though. What was the name of that one who gave you so much trouble, just before you married Kenneth?”

“Oliver de Nore,” Alyce said coldly. “I heard that he was named Auxiliary Bishop of Nyford over the summer, and it's likely that he'll be given a diocese of his own within the next few years. Both the archbishops like him, as do several of the other diocesan bishops—and that counts for a lot, when it comes time to fill vacancies.”

“A pity,” Vera said, yawning again. “You'd think they'd see right through him….” She sighed. “But I don't believe we shall resolve this tonight, dear Alyce. I
must
get some sleep. I return to my dear Jared in the morning. Several days from now, at any rate. I do love you, dearest sister.”

“And I, you,” Alyce murmured, patting her sister's hand, though she did not drift off until long after Vera's breathing had shifted to that of deep slumber.

S
OME
miles south, in the king's private withdrawing room in Rhemuth Castle, the candles burned far later as Kenneth and the king also discussed the very troublesome Bishop Oliver de Nore. Kenneth had briefed the king for several hours immediately after his return, recounting everything he could remember of the encounter at Hallowdale. Sir Xander had also been present for the first part of the briefing, but when he could offer nothing additional, Donal had dismissed him—and then had stormed around the confines of the chamber like a caged lion, swearing fluently and occasionally kicking chair legs or remnants of kindling on the hearth.

“So, will you do something about it?” Kenneth asked, when the king had finally wound down from his initial tirade and asked him to retell the story one more time, to be certain he had all the facts straight.

Donal stiffened, leaning on a windowsill to gaze outside at the lowering twilight, then let out a long breath in a sigh of frustrated defeat.

“There frankly isn't much I
can
do,” he admitted reluctantly. “Unfortunately, de Nore is the archbishops' business. He is under their authority, and they are practically a law unto themselves, when it comes to matters of faith.”

“Sire—”

“No, listen to me. You saw how they reacted after that whole miserable situation surrounding Krispin's murder. God knows, you and Alyce were a part of it. She was, at any rate. It isn't often that a king has to grovel before a pack of priests, but I groveled. It was the only way to get the Interdict lifted, because I
did
kill one of their own—or rather, I ordered him killed; it's much the same thing, when you're a king. I still was responsible, even if I didn't execute him with my own hand.”

“It is part of a king's right and duty to exercise the High Justice, Sire,” Kenneth said stiffly. “God's law allows for that. In fact, sometimes God's law
requires
that, if a king is to do his duty to his people. That duty is assumed when the archbishop anoints the new king with holy chrism, confirming his right and duty to rule with justice. And then the king lays his consecrated hand upon the sacred Scriptures and swears an oath to do just that, in justice and honor.”

“I know that, dammit!”

“I know that you know it, Sire. I was there when you swore that oath, all those years ago, and I know that you meant and mean to honor it. But those men in Hallowdale—and women, God help them!—took the law into their own hands. They took it upon themselves to act as judge, jury, and executioners, and we shall never know whether their victims really were Deryni, or had really done anything untoward, or had done
anything
besides being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Where is the justice in that, Sire? Where is your duty to protect and defend your people, even against bishops, who are also your subjects?”

 

T
HEY
were questions with no easy answers, given the circumstances of the incident at Hallowdale. Kenneth's more official report, somewhat cooler for having slept on it, quickly polarized opinions in the crown council, when they learned of it the next day. Especially summoned to the meeting was the Archbishop of Rhemuth, who did not always attend; but when confronted regarding the probable role of one of his bishops, Archbishop William would only defend Oliver de Nore and assert that his brother bishop could not be held responsible for how uneducated peasants interpreted the sermons preached by his circuit priests.

Kenneth, for his part, would not back down from what he had witnessed with his own eyes; and Sir Trevor as well, long in the king's confidence despite his youth, corroborated the accounts of Kenneth and Xander, when he returned to Rhemuth a few days later with Alyce and Alaric and the rest of Kenneth's household.

The matter clearly was not ended. In an effort to clarify exactly what had occurred, and who was responsible, the king did send a commission of inquiry to Hallowdale early in November, but those interviewed stuck doggedly to their assertion that those burned had been discovered to be notorious Deryni, well deserving of their fate, and the villagers had only been following the exhortations of a traveling preacher.

The king had even taken the precaution of sending along Sir Morian du Joux, the Deryni brother of the woman who had borne the ill-fated Krispin. Summoned to the capital from his usual assignment at the court of the royal governor of Meara, and proven loyal through service to the king on numerous occasions in the field of battle, Morian was little known east of Rhemuth, and had been instructed merely to observe the questioning of the villagers of Hallowdale, employing his powers only to detect lies. Kenneth was not permitted to accompany him, for the council thought him too biased, but the king did send Duke Richard, who alone of the commission was aware of Morian's unique talents—and the danger he faced, if the local folk should realize what he was, in that emotionally charged atmosphere.

But Morian was never detected, and the testimonies appeared to have been truthful, as far as they went, given the villagers' rife superstition, misinformation, and lack of sophistication. By all the evidence available, both Richard and Morian concluded that the man and woman executed by the villagers probably had, indeed, been Deryni, even if the exact nature of their alleged crimes could not be determined. (No one would comment on the alleged execution of a child, and Morian had been forbidden to press the issue.) The role of the preacher and even his exact identity remained unclear, and the man had moved on, in any case. Which left the inquiry largely where it had begun.

It was all mostly over by early December. After due reflection on the results of the inquiry, and another meeting with Archbishop William, attended by Duke Richard as well, the king reluctantly was obliged to put the matter aside—though he did promise Kenneth and Alyce privately that if further such incidents came to his attention, he would take a more aggressive stance. It was not what Kenneth had hoped, but he, too, had to put the matter aside, as king and council settled back into the routine of governing through the short days and long nights of winter. The subject of Hallowdale still arose occasionally—though more for the offense against the king's authority than the fate of the victims. But gradually the ministers' energies shifted back to a more comfortable and commonplace succession of advisory meetings with the king, mild court intrigues, and the occasional serious discussion of trade treaties and border disputes. All of this was punctuated by bouts of arms practice moved into the great hall, as the weather worsened, the occasional hunt, and many a less formal discussion before the fires in the great hall, of an evening after dinner. An ongoing topic of happier speculation was the celebration being planned for the following June, to mark Prince Brion's coming of age.

The king's other children were also a focus for Alyce's attention in those months leading into Advent, and especially the ones nearer Alaric's age. After returning from Arc-en-Ciel, Alyce had fallen back into her role as wife and mother, advisor to her husband concerning Lendour and Corwyn—and thereby, advisor to the king regarding these regions—and companion to the queen. She had also obtained permission to enroll Alaric for the schooling given the royal princes and princesses and the children of the queen's other ladies.

Despite all of this, Alyce found those months of waning autumn and early winter bleak and lonely, for Kenneth had been all but obsessed by his quest for justice in Hallowdale. She did receive frequent letters from Zoë, assuring her of her happiness and the fulfillment she felt, working at Jovett's side—and late in November, joyful news of Zoë's first pregnancy—but the letters only made Alyce feel the absence of her heart-sister more keenly, even though she and the queen soon picked up the former intimacy of their friendship and became nearly inseparable. It helped, but she still missed Zoë and the companionship they had shared for so many years—and Vera, whose kinship she must never allow to be discovered. Even Kenneth did not know.

It was as mother to a bright and active young son that she found her greatest fulfillment, as he became less and less her baby and more and more a person. Alaric was quick and facile, a mannerly child, and easily kept up with other boys half again his age. Prince Brion and his brother Nigel were enough older than Alaric that they paid him little mind, save to include him in the teasing they gave their younger brother and their sisters, but Alaric and all the younger children interacted well. He longed to begin his page's training, though he was yet too young for that, but he relished the lessons he shared with the royal princes and the sons of some of the favored courtiers. All the royal children were thriving, with the youngest now three years old—a matter of some concern to the queen, for there had been no royal pregnancy since Jathan.

The prospect of a brother or sister for Alaric was much on his parents' minds as well, as the nights grew longer and the weather worsened, for Alaric had also turned three, a week before Prince Jathan, and Alyce had yet to conceive again. Periodic reports on the progress of Zoë's pregnancy only underlined Alyce's own failure, and she worried that she had, indeed, miscarried earlier in the year; but she suspected that Kenneth's ongoing fervor over the incident at Hallowdale was also taking its toll.

“You must let it go, my darling,” she told him one wintry night early in December. “You must accept that there are some things that you simply cannot change, however much your honor cries out for justice. We Deryni have long been aware of this inequity. Come; we shall light a candle for those unfortunate victims, and then let them rest in peace, for they surely are in the bosom of God's love.”

He agreed to make the gesture, and went with her hand in hand down drafty and deserted corridors to the chapel royal in fleece-lined slippers and heavy night robes bundled over nightshirts and sleeping shifts, there to light a solitary candle against the darkness and weep together by its light, holding one another against the grief and the fear, for it could have been Alyce burnt at the stake in that distant village, or another like it—or even in the cathedral square of Rhemuth itself, if she were ever discovered in flagrant transgression against the narrow strictures set by the bishops against those of her kind.

Later when they had returned to their chamber, their urgent lovemaking was silent and even violent, as if Kenneth tried, by sheer force of will and flesh, to imbue his wife with something of his fierce protection and strength, though he knew that, if the unthinkable occurred, he might not be able to protect her as he had done before their marriage.

It was a sober winding-down of what had been a year punctuated both by joy and by sorrow. Alyce had hoped that she might have conceived on that night, to cancel out some of the sorrow with hope and new life, but the next weeks of waiting did not prove it so. As Advent counted down to the eve of Christmas, the weather grew increasingly foul, and it became clear that even the rebirth of the Light would be cloaked in gloom.

The king and his family kept the feast of Christmas quietly that year, as befitted the religious aspect of the season, but a ferocious ice storm during the night of Christmas itself curtailed the appearance of the royal family at the cathedral the next morning for the traditional St. Stephen's Day Mass and distribution of royal largesse afterward. It was a far cry from that other St. Stephen's Day when Kenneth Morgan had finally summoned the courage to make his proposal of marriage to Alyce de Corwyn, but the two of them made a virtue of the weather as an excuse to keep mostly to their apartments that day, while Llion amused their son.

On the day following, the Feast of Holy Innocents, the weather improved enough—barely—for the queen and her ladies to venture down to the cathedral at midday with the delayed largesse, for many of the people of the city depended on this bounty from the royal coffers to survive the winter. A resolute Prince Brion assisted his mother and her ladies in distributing the gifts of food and silver pennies from the cathedral steps, well wrapped up against the weather in fur-lined hat and cloak and stout boots, but the younger children they left in the care of those responsible for their supervision when parents could not be around.

For Alaric, that meant stalking the castle halls with the younger princes and several of the junior squires, overseen by Sir Llion. The king had already rescheduled his customary petitioners' court until the morning of Twelfth Night, though he still would hold it on the steps of the cathedral, and had planned a day's hunting while the queen carried out her royal duties; but he and his party returned after only a few hours, wet and half-frozen and without success in the field.

The weather deteriorated steadily in the week leading up to Twelfth Night Court, such that it became clear that many of those normally expected would not be able to complete the winter journey to Rhemuth. On the eve of Epiphany, however, an exhausted and half-frozen rider arrived from Coroth with news that soon would dominate nearly every conversation within the walls of Rhemuth Castle.

“An urgent dispatch from the Corwyn regents, Sire,” the messenger blurted out, even as he half-collapsed to one knee before the startled king and extended a sealed dispatch in a gloved hand that shook from cold and fatigue. It was Sir Robert of Tendal, Kenneth realized, as the young man pulled off his fur-lined cap, son of the Chancellor of Corwyn. “The Crown Prince of Torenth is dead!”