The Bastard Prince (60 page)

And at midnight, the torches and candles were still burning in the council chamber, as the newly reunited Regency Council continued to consider strategies to protect what they had stolen.

“It doesn't seem likely, then, that any serious force from Eastmarch can reach here in less than two or three days,” Tammaron was saying, as he rubbed wearily at his eyes. “We're probably safe until after the funeral. By then, we'll have our troops in place and the city secure. Also, the more men they try to bring, the slower they'll be. What's the earliest that a messenger could have reached them with the news?”

“Well, it would have been a solid two days' ride to Lochalyn Castle,” Manfred said. “Obviously, we made no attempt to send word north, but it's possible, I suppose, that they might have had agents among our returning forces, who could have carried the news. But our own men didn't know of the king's death until the next morning, other than the officers billeted at the convent. The sisters at the convent knew, of course, but we closed it down for the night, and no one left.”

“Except that priest who heard the king's final confession,” Rhun murmured. “You wouldn't have thought such an old man could disappear that quickly, without someone seeing him.”

“What priest was that?” Hubert inquired, looking sharply at Lior.

“Just—an itinerant father who showed up at the convent, your Grace,” Lior answered uncomfortably. “Some priest of Saint Jarlath—a Father Donatus. I'd given the king the last anointing during the night, but he'd refused confession and Holy Communion. By then, he was—not kindly disposed toward
Custodes
clergy.” He blanched as he caught Hubert's simmering look of resentment, only then remembering how the king's brother, King Alroy, had similarly refused Hubert's ministrations when
he
lay dying.

“I'd been trying to locate someone not of my Order,” Lior offered. “I couldn't let him die without full benefit of the Sacraments.”

“A salve to your conscience, after you'd set about his death,” Rhun muttered, subsiding at Manfred's sharp glance.

“The convent's own priest was away, but one of the sisters produced this Father Donatus just after noon,” Lior went on cautiously. “He looked harmless enough—he was quite old—and he wasn't in
Custodes
habit. I took him to the king immediately. Apparently his Highness found him acceptable. The priest was with him when he died, and he comforted Sir Cathan afterward.”

“And disappeared before he could be interrogated,” Hubert said coldly, “being well aware of the circumstances of the king's death, having heard his last confession.”

Secorim frowned, daring to come to Lior's defense. “With all due respect, your Grace, the priest is bound by the seal of—”

“You apparently assume far more conscience in the Order of Saint Jarlath than exists in your own Order, Secorim,” Hubert said coldly. “How many times have you and I—and Paulin, in his time—broken the seal when it suited our convenience? Donatus, Donatus—the name means ‘a gift,' doesn't it? Lior, what did he look like?”

“Just an aging country priest, your Grace. Not a large man,” he elaborated, at Hubert's sharp look. “Sparse of flesh—wiry, I would say—dark eyes, white hair, neatly tonsured.”

“And wearing the robes of the Order of Saint Jarlath.” Hubert shook his head, still looking annoyed. “Secorim, send to the Abbot of Saint Jarlath's and find out whether he has a priest meeting that description. I know it will take some time, but I want to know. In the meantime—” He leaned back in his chair, smiling dangerously. “I wonder what else Sir Cathan can tell us about the man.”

A quarter hour later, Cathan was again seated in the chair at the end of the council table, barefooted and restrained by manacles and fetters, his prisoner status now undeniable. Again he wished they had given him the mercy of heavier medication, so he could have escaped this interrogation. Instead, he fought to keep his head up and follow the line of Hubert's questioning.

“I've told you, I never saw the man before that day,” he said, which was true enough. “Surely you don't expect me to recognize every priest in every little religious order in Gwynedd. Besides, I was hardly in any condition to notice details. He was a priest that the king was willing to see. That was the only thing on my mind.”

“And what did he say to you, after he took you out of the death chamber? Where did you go? Where did
he
go?”

“I don't remember exactly what he said. Words intended to comfort, I'm sure. I'm afraid I wasn't in any condition to appreciate them.”

“And you went—where?” Hubert repeated.

“To—to the chapel.” Cathan shook his head bleakly. “We prayed, I think. Yes, I'm sure we must have done. And then he—left. And Fulk and I went back to the king.”

“Did you see him leave? Did he take a horse?”

“I don't remember seeing either,” Cathan whispered, which was true. “I wanted to get back to Rhysem's body. I wanted to—attend him, to serve him one last time. But they were—cutting off his hand …”

The memory was suddenly before him again, far too vividly, loosed and intensified by the drugs in his body. He felt the bleak horror rising in his throat as he buried his face in manacled hands and started sobbing, a still coherent and logical part of him daring to hope that his interrogators would find it difficult to cope with emotions loosed by the medication they themselves had given him.

Even drug-fuzzed, his logic turned out to be correct. When they concluded that he could tell them nothing more, they let the guards take him back to his cell.

This time, he did sleep from sheer exhaustion; but in his dreams, stirred by emotion and unfettered by his medication, he relived those terrible last hours over and over again.

He saw no one but his
Custodes
jailers the next day. He dozed uneasily through most of it. The meal they brought him at midday was drugged, but he ate it anyway, for starving himself would only make him weaker, and they would only drug him some other way if he refused to eat; the sting of a Deryni pricker would utterly betray him. His only consolation was that they would have to bring him out for the funeral the next day, for they dared not risk his sister's hysteria, if he was not at her side to help her through the emotions of the day.

Michaela, too, dozed through much of the day, though her sleep was that of deep trance, interspersed by the usual constraints imposed on a captive queen. Archbishop Hubert invited her to attend Mass that morning in the chapel royal, but she did not wish to subject Owain to the strain of another public appearance and would not leave him while she went. In any case, she could not bear the thought of receiving the Sacrament from Hubert when it was not required. Tomorrow would be more than sufficient for that.

At least Owain seemed fine when he woke, chirpy and eager for breakfast, apparently unaffected by what had happened the night before, if he even remembered any of it. Rhysel assured the queen that he would not.

“He Reads very much like a Deryni child,” Rhysel told her, as she braided her hair after their leisurely breakfast, still cloistered in the queen's bedchamber. Owain had retreated to the window embrasure with the Papa knight and the Uncle Cathan knight and was setting up the others his governess had brought the day before, taking them out of their wicker basket and lining them up for royal inspection.

“If he grows into his powers in a similar way,” Rhysel continued, “he won't have much access until he approaches puberty—but that's as it should be, because you wouldn't want a child wielding the kind of power he'll have until some discretion is acquired. After all, he still has to survive among humans who are basically afraid of us.”

“Which means a benign regency, to protect him until he's grown,” Michaela murmured. “Oh, Rhysel, do you think they'll be able to do it? Will the Kheldour lords reach here in time?”

“God willing,” Rhysel whispered. “God knows they will try.”

The Kheldour lords, meanwhile, were galloping southward from Valoret on blooded horses from the archbishop's stables, striking out across country rather than sticking to the better-traveled route that skirted the Eirian. The going was harder, but the distance was considerably shorter—and the only way they had a chance of reaching Rhemuth before the king's funeral on the morrow. The great lords would not be expecting them so soon, certain they could not have received the news and responded so quickly.

They would stop at Mollingford in a few hours to change horses again. They had made the three-day ride to Valoret in two, where Queron had already paved the way with Bishop Ailin MacGregor, Valoret's long-suffering auxiliary bishop.

Ailin was and long had been one of the keys to their plan. Singled out early in his career by no less a churchman than the saintly Archbishop Jaffray, to whom he had been devoted, Ailin had been hardly a year in his incumbency as Jaffray's auxiliary when the archbishop's death necessitated the election of a new successor—and Ailin had not supported the man who eventually won and held the See of Valoret. Not only had he supported the candidacy of Alister Cullen over Hubert as Primate of Gwynedd, but he dared to abstain in the election that made Hubert the ousted Alister's replacement, a few days later.

It was not an offense for which Hubert could remove him from office—and Ailin dutifully gave his new superior the vow of obedience demanded at his enthronement—but Hubert soon had made it clear that Ailin might forget about ever being promoted to a see of his own, so long as Hubert lived. Nor might he even expect escape as an itinerant bishop, for they enjoyed too much freedom. In Valoret, as a functionary in Hubert's episcopal machine, Ailin would remain closeted away where he could do no harm, under close observation by Hubert's spies—who increasingly wore the habit of the
Custodes Fidei
, whose Mother House was nearby. Resigned to his fate, Ailin continued to honor his vow to his office, for he was a conscientious man and a dutiful son of the Church, but he harboured a smouldering resentment against the man who had stymied his career out of spite and now proceeded to abuse the office of primate and archbishop to extend his secular power.

This resentment did not go unmarked, though Ailin had kept it carefully private in Valoret. The exiled Bishop Dermot—and through him, the coalition led by Joram and the Deryni Bishop Niallan—had been courting Ailin for several years, against the eventual military ouster of the great lords. Ailin had been hesitant about supporting an armed undertaking that could be construed as rebellion against the king he had sworn to uphold; but supplanting Hubert and his cronies in favor of the king's duly chosen and appointed regency appealed to Ailin. He had inspected the codicils produced by the Duke of Claibourne and the Earl of Marley, duly witnessed by the queen's brother and a priest who was
not
a member of the despicable
Custodes Fidei
, and he had smiled as he lodged one of the copies in the archives of Valoret Cathedral. And he was ready to back up his approval with horses, men, and his own person.

Now, as they pressed on toward Mollingford, pulling back to a walk after a long stretch of cantering, Bishop Ailin drew rein alongside Ansel. Like the rest of them, he wore riding leathers and a leather brigandine, his tonsure covered by a leather cap and with no other sign of his calling visible. Unlike the rest of them, he was unaccustomed to such long hours in the saddle—fit enough, for a man in his mid-fifties, but they had ridden through the night, with only brief stops to water the horses and snatch rations on the go.

“Could we stop for a few minutes?” he said breathlessly.

“Legs still bothering you?” Ansel replied.

At Ailin's pained nod, Ansel surveyed ahead and behind, catching Sighere's glance backward, and signaled a halt. They were passing through a broad meadow studded with tiny lake-lets, with a clear view for miles in either direction.

“A quarter hour to rest the horses,” he called, as he pulled up. “Tieg, see if anyone has a problem. Dom Queron, could you join us, please?”

As he swung down, giving his horse to one of the Kheldour men and then going to help Ailin dismount, Queron kneed his mount closer and also slid from his saddle. He was at least a decade older than Ailin, but the past week in the pursuit of the king had reaccustomed him to the rigors of long-distance riding, and he knew exactly what the bishop must be feeling.

“I thoroughly sympathize, your Grace,” the Healer said easily, as Ansel helped Ailin ease down on a rotten log. “From very recent experience, I can imagine that your legs must feel like jelly. I can give you something to dull the pain, or I can do something more direct. It's your decision.”

Ailin grimaced and stretched out first one leg, then the other, leaning against Ansel for support, his face grey with fatigue and discomfort.

“Well, I don't suppose I ought to take anything, as tired as I am,” he said, massaging at his inner thighs, “so that leaves something more direct. I won't deny I'm a little apprehensive, but I've trusted you with my life and office and maybe my soul; I might as well trust you with my body.”

Smiling, Queron knelt down in front of Ailin, glancing up at Ansel in quick instruction. “My Healer's vows are as holy as my priestly ones, to do no harm,” he said gently. “Your Grace may rest easy.”

So saying, he set his hands on Ailin's knees, even as Ansel took control from behind Ailin, pulling his head back to rest against his waist. Ailin's pale eyes closed, his whole body going limp against Ansel's. In Healing trance, Queron worked his magic very quickly, easing the cramped muscles in knees and thighs as best he could, then setting a fatigue-banishing spell on the human bishop. It would need renewal before they rode into Rhemuth, but the rest of the journey would be easier for it.