King Javan’s Year (58 page)

Inside, the king was dressing for weapons practice, Charlan helping him buckle on leather body armor. Both Charlan and Guiscard were already similarly attired. The guard's report raised immediate apprehension in the minds of all three men, for it was not at all like Faelan to sleep so soundly or so late, especially this past week.

Exchanging worried glances with his aides, Javan told the guard to make certain the priest did not leave, hurriedly strapping on the Haldane sword over his practice leathers while Guiscard briefly disappeared to his quarters across the hall to fetch a slender length of brass rod, sharply bent at the end. Wordlessly Javan led the way to Faelan's quarters, Father Daíthi trailing wide-eyed behind in custody of the guard. A knock at Faelan's door produced no response.

“Father Faelan?” Javan called, knocking again. “Father Faelan, are you in there?”

Again, no response. As expected, the door latch did not move when Javan tried it, so he stepped back to let Guiscard crouch down with his bit of brass.

“Do you think he's gone out?” Javan asked softly as Guiscard probed at the lock. He could sense no living presence beyond the door. “He hasn't left this room since the excommunication, but maybe he decided to submit. Maybe he went down to the chapel to pray.”

The lock yielded with a quiet, well-oiled
click
, perhaps helped along by Guiscard's powers, and the Deryni tucked his pick into a belt pouch as he rose, one hand on the latch.

“Let me go in first, Sire,” he murmured, pushing the door just slightly ajar and moving between Javan and the door.

Javan found his right hand dropping to rest on the hilt of his sword. He sensed no danger, but nonetheless he let Guiscard go first, dread suddenly fueling his apprehension rather than personal peril.

As Guiscard cautiously pushed the door open, Javan's eyes were dazzled at first by the bright sunlight streaming through the open shutters on the window, harsh after the near darkness of the corridor. Shading his eyes with his free hand, Javan sidestepped left into the room behind Guiscard, keeping his back to the wall and trying to pierce the brightness as Charlan surged in behind him. Guiscard was already around the door to the right and checking the bed, which was empty, signalling with a hand gesture for Charlan to close the door behind them, shutting out the guard and the priest.

The room appeared to be deserted. Faelan's breviary lay in its customary place on the armrest of the
prie-dieu
, neatly closed, but there was no candle in the candlestick beside it. Shifting his gaze to the little writing desk, Javan spotted what was left of the missing candle beside several sheets of vellum fanned out to nearly cover the surface, the burnt-out stub just visible in a congealed puddle of wax that extended very near one of the pages.

“That's odd,” Javan said, moving closer. “He'd never go off and leave a candle burning on the bare wood. It might have started a fire. Does that mean he got called away in such a hurry that he couldn't put it out, or—”

“It means,” Guiscard said in a tight, quiet voice, “that he
couldn't
put it out.”

He was walking very slowly toward the heavy curtain that covered the entry to the garderobe opposite the foot of the bed. Mystified, Javan followed with his eyes. The dark-green fustian was suspended from wooden rings on a sturdy iron rod, the rod hinged to a heavy iron staple at one end and resting on a second staple at the other. At first Javan could not imagine what Guiscard was looking at; but then he noticed that one of the curtain rings did not appear to be wooden at all, but a loop of plaited cord of crimson and gold. The significance registered just as Guiscard reached the curtain and briskly drew it back.

“Oh, God!” Javan gasped, as the motion set the body of Father Faelan gently turning, hanging by the
Custodes
cincture around his neck.

Beside him, Charlan crossed himself and whispered, “Sweet
Jesu
, they've driven him to suicide!”

“Cut him down!” Javan ordered, already starting forward to do just that.

But Charlan caught him by one shoulder even as Guiscard whirled to glare at him, one arm outstretched to block his approach.

“It's too late for that!” Guiscard snapped. “He's been dead for hours. The most important question at this point is, did he do it himself or did someone else help him along? We may not be able to find out, if you barge in and disrupt evidence.”

Javan's resistance ceased immediately, and he made himself blink back hot tears as Charlan released him.

“
They
killed him, didn't they?” he whispered, staring hard at Guiscard. “Faelan would never have taken his own life.”

“I tend to agree,” Guiscard said quietly, “but let's examine the evidence before we jump to any conclusions either way. Charlan, lock that door.”

As the younger knight moved to obey, Guiscard turned to look more closely at the body hanging from the curtain rod, moving slightly to one side as Javan approached as well.

Faelan's end had been neither painless nor quick. The familiar, earnest face was darkly suffused, the protruding tongue black, the dark eyes staring, bulging in their sockets. There appeared to be little question that he had died of strangulation, but whether before or after he was hanged might be another story. At the foot of the bed, the overturned chair from the writing table told of possibly having been kicked from beneath him by Faelan's own volition, but it just as easily could have been placed there after the fact.

Javan tried not to imagine Faelan being hoisted by the neck to strangle there, perhaps with hands bound so he could not resist, could not reach up to catch his weight on the curtain rod and save himself. What did seem certain was that Faelan's own cincture had been the instrument of his death—the doubled and intertwined cords of Haldane crimson and gold.

Turning away, unable to look at him anymore, Javan stumbled blindly over to the little writing desk and found himself gazing at the top sheet of vellum through his tears. If the deed had been Faelan's, he might have left a message.

Words written in a shaky hand he could not be sure was Faelan's told of his despair at his suspension and excommunication, his inner torment, his growing despondence. But when Javan picked up the page in shaking fingers, not wanting to believe what he was reading, he gasped at the flash of many silver coins spread on the sheet beneath. Suddenly he knew, without counting, that there would be thirty of them.

“The
Custodes
did it,” he said softly, his voice like a whisper of dry leaves. “They've named him a Judas.”

Both Charlan and Guiscard had turned at his words, and Charlan came to stand close by Javan and gape at the coins in shock.

“Thirty pieces of silver,” he whispered. “But he didn't really betray the Order. He just couldn't bear to be tortured again.”

Guiscard had come to stare as well, dispassionately setting himself to counting the coins, shifting them in pairs from one side of the vellum to the other.

“The only thing we can do is to pretend that we believe it was suicide,” he said quietly. “Of course it wasn't, but any other response that we make could put us under closer scrutiny. It's possible that they suspect something—or Faelan may simply have become inconvenient, too much of an embarrassment. Perhaps this was a test, to see how we'd respond—”

“And it cost a good man his life!” Javan began.

“Yes, it did,” Guiscard retorted. “And it could cost other good men
their
lives—among them, a good king, if you overreact. You can't accuse the
Custodes Fidei
of murdering one of their own, Sire, even if he was technically excommunicate. You have to at least pretend to accept that Faelan's death was indeed suicide, brought about by the pressure of his assignment.”

“That's certainly reassuring,” Javan muttered. “Serving in the royal household drives otherwise sane men to take their own lives.” He ducked his head, again trying to blink back tears, though less successfully this time. “He was a good priest, Guiscard—and a very brave and loyal man. And now he—can't even be buried in consecrated ground.”

“If that's what's worrying you, I'll see about getting it consecrated after the fact,” Guiscard said sharply. “I'll ask Joram to endanger his life, if that's what it takes! You don't really think that matters, do you? God isn't going to hold it against Faelan that he was murdered by men who tried to make it look as if he killed himself.”

Drawing a deep, sobering breath, Javan made himself take hold of his emotions. Guiscard was right. Faelan could not be damned through the treachery of others. God surely would take note of the circumstances of his death and receive him to His bosom. He had died excommunicate, but that, too, was undeserved.

Still, he found the tears running unabashedly down his cheeks as he and Charlan lifted up the limp body and Guiscard cut the cincture that secured Faelan to the rod. They laid the body on the bed then, and Guiscard went to summon representatives of the
Custodes Fidei
to come and deal with their own, while Javan and Charlan kept watch.

So it was that Hubert and Paulin found them half an hour later, when Guiscard brought them back with a pair of guards, Charlan standing watch beside the door and Javan sitting quietly on the edge of the bed beside the body, his tears now dried.

“Sire, what has happened?” Hubert said.

“That's all too clear,” Paulin said before Javan could reply. “Sire, you have driven him to this.”

“Paulin, please!” Hubert snapped, before Paulin could go off on a rampage.

Javan glanced in the direction of the garderobe curtain, glad for the excuse to turn his face from the two.

“We found him hanging by his cincture,” he said quietly. “The chair was overturned nearby. He must have—kicked it out of the way. He left some writing that doesn't make much sense, but—”

He bit off the rest of his sentence, afraid that if he continued, he was going to start letting his anger overshadow his sorrow—and good sense. Hubert apparently believed him, for he came to set a hand hesitantly on the royal shoulder, while Paulin crossed brusquely to the table to read what had been written. In picking up the vellum, he disturbed some of the coins, glancing at them contemptuously.

“You pay your chaplain well, Sire,” he said. “Perhaps this explains another reason he took his life. I hardly need remind you that the Rule requires all monies received by brethren of the Order to be remitted to the Order forthwith.”

“I gave him a regular stipend for charitable works in my name,” Javan said steadily, determined that Paulin should not further besmirch Faelan's name with the charge of embezzlement. “I imagine that he had been saving it toward some special purpose.”

“Then the money is yours,” Paulin said, sweeping the coins off the table into his hand and holding it out to him. “Perhaps you would do better to attend to such charitable works yourself. Come, Sire. Take it. 'Tis a sizable amount for charity.”

Controlling his disgust, Javan held out his cupped hands and let Paulin drop the money into them. Charlan looked stunned, and Guiscard quickly moved in to offer a pouch from his belt.

“Here, Sire. Let me take charge of that for you. I'm sure a good use can be found for it.”

As Javan let the silver flow through his fingers into Guiscard's pouch, he thought he could devise several good uses for it, all of them involving dire consequences for Paulin and whoever had done this. He forced himself from dreams of vengeance back to practicalities as he rose and glanced down at Faelan again.

“He'll not be able to receive the rites of the Church, will he?” he said quietly. “I'm sorry for that. He was a good priest.”

“
Good
priests do not take their own lives,” Hubert said primly.

Biting back the retort he longed to make, Javan merely bowed his head and murmured anyway, “
Requiescat in pace.
”

So saying, he turned and led Guiscard and Charlan out of the room, knowing that there was nothing else he could do for Father Faelan.

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY-THREE

Thou hast put away mine acquaintance far from me
.

—Psalms 88:8

That very afternoon, the body of Father Faelan was laid to rest without ceremony or sacred rites in a potter's field at the edge of the city, for as suicide and excommunicate he could not be buried in consecrated ground. As further sign of his disgrace, those preparing his body for burial had stripped him of the habit of his Order and shaved his head to remove all vestige of his clerical tonsure. He was allowed no coffin, but only the rudest of rough-spun winding sheets to shield him from the earth. Lay men-at-arms under the direction of the
Custodes Fidei
saw to the burial, but no actual member of the Order attended.

Not even Javan was present, though he longed to be. As king, he dared not make an official appearance at the interment of an excommunicate, even though Faelan had been his chaplain. But toward dusk he rode out along the river with Charlan and Guiscard, accompanied by a dozen of his lancers for protection, and timed his return to be passing by the potter's field just as twilight was settling over the city.

He left Charlan with the lancers, holding the horses, while he and Guiscard made their way over the rough ground to the dry, unmarked mound of earth. He dared not kneel to show his respect, for the lancers were watching, but he bowed his head in silent prayer for the repose of Faelan's soul as a cool breeze off the river whipped at his hair. After a moment he had to look up again, for that was the only way he could blink back the tears that were welling in his eyes.

“I shouldn't have let him stay,” he said to Guiscard, gazing unseeing into the sunset. “I could have made him go. He never would have known it wasn't his choice.”