“He’s as bad as all the rest, for all his newness to the Order,” he said lightly. “All of you spend far too much time and energy worrying about a crotchety old man.”
“Vicar General!” Johannes exclaimed.
“Oh, I know you’ll deny it to my face, so what’s the use?” He sobered. “Actually, each of you can do something to assist me this morning, if you would. Johannes, how much time do we have?”
Johannes looked doubtful. “You should be at the cathedral within an hour, Vicar General. May I ask what you have in mind?”
“That’s ample time. I intend to go there almost immediately,” Camber answered, ignoring the question. “Dualta, I should like you to convey this summons to the grand master with my greetings. It instructs him to assemble all available members of the Order in the chapter house this afternoon, after the funeral. The meeting concerns the status of the Order and the selection of my successor. I’ll inform the archbishop about the use of the hall when I go to vest.”
He handed over the summons, authenticated at the bottom with his ecclesiastical seal, then held up the second missive, this one folded and sealed closed with the blue wax.
“Now, this is a list of those I especially desire in attendance this afternoon. Give this to Jebediah as well, and ask him to ensure that as many as possible are there, given the relatively short notice.”
The knight nodded. “I understand, Father General.”
“Good. Now, Johannes.”
“Yes, Vicar General?”
“Johannes, I want to ask whether you would be willing to give your time and talent to someone besides myself this morning. Yon Healer in there got little sleep last night because of me.” He gestured behind him with a grim smile. “So I want him to sleep as long as possible. In the meantime, see about fresh clothing for him, and make certain his lady wife knows where he is. Tell her that I regret having taken him from her side at a time like this, and assure her that he will join her in time for the funeral. Then make sure that he does.”
“What about yourself, Father?” Johannes asked. “I had thought to help you vest for Mass.”
“Many can help me with that, good Johannes. I had rather entrust Lord Rhys to your care.”
He took Johannes’s elbow and drew him into the doorway, himself moving into the corridor.
“When he does wake, assure him that I am well and tell him where I’ve gone. I’ll rely on you to get him to the cathedral on time.”
“Very well, Father,” Johannes said dubiously.
Camber could feel the eyes of both men on him as he turned and strode briskly down the corridor, but there was no suspicion in either’s mind—only genuine concern, which was being rapidly allayed by their master’s apparent return to robust health.
So far so good. Now, by arriving at the cathedral early, he should be able to spend a few moments collecting his thoughts for the funeral ordeal ahead. Though he knew there was no help for it, and that he would be in no technical violation of his personal ecclesiastical authority as a deacon, he still could not help feeling a little uneasy about filling Alister’s sacerdotal functions.
Cinhil was in a grim mood after his sleepless night, and the promised heat of the day did little to soothe him. Like Camber, he had abandoned his bed at first light; but his desertion had been in name only, for he had but tossed and turned anyway.
He roamed his chamber restlessly for nearly an hour, his mind still churning with the events of the previous evening, before finally putting the turmoil from his mind for a while and calling the servants to draw his bath. He suffered their ministrations in silent detachment while they washed and groomed and dressed him. By mid-morning, garbed in the unrelieved black he had chosen for this morning of mornings, he was finally able to dismiss the servants and settle down, to really prepare himself.
The stark facts were easy enough to accept. This noon would see the funeral of Camber MacRorie, and tomorrow his grieving family would take his body home to Caerrorie for burial in the family vaults. By all rights, that should make an end to all. It did, for ordinary men.
But Camber was no ordinary man, another part of Cinhil reasoned. He was Deryni. Still, even Deryni could not return from death. Or, could they?
Fighting down an icy shudder, Cinhil sat on the chest at the foot of his bed and laid a hand on its polished surface, assuring himself that it was still there, with its precious contents.
His faith told him that there were exceptions. Very holy men had interceded in the lives of the living before, else there would be none of those creatures whom his religion called saints. And there was no doubt that something had come over Alister Cullen last night. Whether it was Camber or not, a part of him could not help but be intrigued. He had never been witness to a miracle before.
But Camber was not a saint! The rational part of him recoiled at that, shrinking from the possibility that even a sainted Camber might continue to take an interest in the affairs of Gwynedd, and its king in particular. If Camber had returned from the dead to aid Alister Cullen, what else might he return to do? And what must he know, from the other side of that dark veil of death? Perhaps he even knew of Cinhil’s forbidden cache of vestments, and the secret, rebellious thoughts within his heart—and if he did, what might he do?
A whimper caught in Cinhil’s throat, and he clutched at the edges of the trunk to stabilize his world.
No! He must not think of that! Camber could not touch him now. Camber was dead. Cinhil and a host of others had seen him dead, and would soon see him buried. Then he certainly could not return!
Shaking his head, he forced himself to take a deep, relaxing breath, willed his hands to unclench on the oak edge at his knees. His brow was dripping with perspiration, his upper lip and chin beaded with moisture beneath mustache and beard. Screwing his eyes shut against the runnels of sweat, he wiped a sleeve across his face.
He was overreacting, and a rational part of him knew it. Mindless panic could serve no useful purpose. Camber was dead, and could no longer rule him. It was time to bury him.
With another deep breath, Cinhil stood and arranged the folds of his robe around him, tugging his belt into place with hands which were steady and without tremor. Moving briskly to the polished glass beside his bed, he took up the coronet the servants had left and placed it firmly on his brow—though he would not meet the eyes which stared back from the glass.
Minutes later, he was joining the procession which was forming in the castle yard to walk the quarter-mile to the cathedral. He even managed to find a gentle smile for his queen, as he took her arm and they began to move. He could barely see her tear-swollen face beneath the heavy veil she wore, but for that he was thankful. He knew he could not cope with both Camber and his queen this morning.
The funeral of the Earl of Culdi began on the stroke of noon precisely, in a cathedral filled to capacity by those who had loved, respected, and sometimes feared him. Three Deryni priests celebrated his Requiem: the Primate of All Gwynedd, who had been his boyhood friend; the Vicar General of the Order of Saint Michael, who once had been his enemy; and his only surviving son. The three moved through the ritual in flawless harmony, permitting no faltering of voice or movement to mar any part of this last sacrament for the dead man.
And Camber himself, secure and outwardly serene in a form both known and alien, prayed for Alister Cullen: both the man who had been and the man who had become. Only when it was over, and he had followed Anscom and Joram back into the relative privacy of the sacristy, did any reaction ruffle his outward calm. Brushing aside those who waited to help him from his vestments, he fled to a far corner of the chamber and pressed the heels of both hands hard against his eyes, as much to still his trembling as to shut out what he had seen.
Mere participation in the funeral had not unnerved him. Anscom’s priestly role had been the essential one, with Camber and Joram only giving support to the prayers which the archbishop offered in the name of the deceased. Camber had functioned as a deacon
without difficulty, bolstered by his own long-ago memories as well as the more recent ones of his alter ego. No, it was not that part of the charade which set him shaking now—though he knew that was something with which he must deal eventually.
He drew a deep, shuddering breath and forced his conscious mind to slip down deep inside his fears, touching the real reason for his reaction almost immediately. There, beyond the reach of normal reason, a simpler, more primitive part of him howled and gibbered in mindless terror, cowering from the remembered image of his own body on the bier before the altar.
He was not really afraid of death—not normal death, at any rate, for that must come to all men, in time. Even Ariella, in all her arcane knowledge, black and white, had not been able to cheat real death indefinitely—though Camber thought he knew why her last spell had failed.
But there were many ways to die, not all of them so final or so clean. The visual image of his own face, so still in death, was concrete symbol of his own quite different death and rebirth in another’s life, as well as body. From here, there could be no casual turning back. For better or for worse, he was now Alister Cullen. Except for rare occasions when he might dare relax his hold, Camber MacRorie was truly dead.
That acknowledgment made, he found that he could let go of his fear. He took another deep breath and felt himself relax; breathed again as his pulse slowed and his trembling ceased.
He would not have to look on that face again. Even now, Anscom’s monks were waiting for the last of the mourners to leave the cathedral, so that they might seal the body in its coffin and wrap the whole in leaden foil. Tomorrow the body would go to Caerrorie and be buried, and that would be the end of it. And he, Alister Cullen to the outside world, would go on.
Squaring his shoulders and breathing again, he turned and went back into the center of the chamber, delivering himself to the ministrations of Johannes and another monk. His movements, as he helped them take off chasuble and other vestments, were automatic, Alister’s; and he allowed that other part of him to take over his physical movements as he scanned the chamber for the first time since entering it.
Anscom was gone. He suspected that the archbishop had returned to his own vesting chapel almost immediately, sensing that both of his colleagues would wish to be alone with their grief. Anscom had always been a man of practical sensitivity—only one of the traits which had first drawn him and Camber into friendship, more than forty years before.
But Joram was there, eyes averted, deep in thought, changing back into his accustomed Michaeline raiment with movements as automatic as Camber’s. Camber held his arms away from his body as he watched his son, letting Johannes knot the broad white sash of Michaeline knighthood around his waist. As the other monk draped his shoulders with the formal, badge-embroidered mantle of the vicar generalship, Camber ducked his head to permit donning of the silver pectoral cross which Johannes brought. Lastly, Camber picked up the skullcap of royal blue and put it on his head, adjusting it automatically as he moved closer to Joram. Johannes motioned for the other monk to leave and withdrew to stand against the door, there to wait until his superior was ready to go.
Camber shifted the folds of his mantle to a more comfortable arrangement as Joram looked up. One of the cathedral monks was fastening Joram’s cassock, a second standing by with his white sash. Joram’s eyes were hooded and unreadable.
“I meant to speak to you before this, Joram, but I thought you would want the time alone,” Camber said. He was well aware that he dared not speak too openly in front of Joram’s dressers. “I’m sure you’re aware of the Grand Chapter. I fear it may seem precipitate, but I knew that you would be occupied with family duties for the next few days, and scheduling this meeting for today seemed the only way to permit your attendance. I value your counsel, you know.”
Joram averted his eyes as he fastened his own cloak at his throat. “Thank you, Father General. I appreciate the thought.”
“Will you accompany me?” Camber continued, laying his hand gently on Joram’s elbow and gesturing toward the door with his eyes.
Joram, helpless to resist under the gaze of so many curious observers, could only murmur assent and move with him. Though Camber knew that Joram must be yearning for some time alone, under the double burden of grieving the loss of Cullen and pretending to grieve for his father, there was simply no help for it. Camber dreaded facing his first Cullenencounter with the Michaelines without Joram at his side, and Joram must leave in the morning to escort “Camber’s” body back to Caerrorie.
Just outside the sacristy, Gellis de Cleary, the acting precentor, was waiting to conduct them to the chapter house. Reentering the cathedral by a north door, they made their way along the ambulatory aisle and across the south transept, exiting through the processional door into the warm brightness of the cloister walk. At least a score of Michaelines, clergy and knights mixed, were milling outside the entrance to the chapter house, catching a last breath of cooler air before joining their brethren in the closed, circular hall. The stragglers picked up their pace as they saw their vicar general approaching, the scrape of sandaled and boot-shod feet shuffling and echoing on the tiled floor.
As Camber appeared in the doorway and was seen, a respectful pathway opened before him and the chamber began to quiet. Those already seated rose at his entry, crowding together on the tiers of stone benches to make room for their more tardy colleagues. All conversation ceased as the tall, gray-haired figure moved among them.
Smiling faintly, nodding greeting and recognition to those whose eyes he met, Camber made his way through the center of the hall, knowing in a flash of dual memory that he had always come this way among his brothers in faith, reaching out to touch a hand here, a shoulder there in comfort, fingers moving in benediction above numerous bowed heads. He was aware of Joram following a few paces behind—comfort to the part of him which was Alister as well as to himself—and then another jog of memory brought a wave of unexpected sorrow: for it was Nathan who approached to conduct him to the abbatial throne, not the beloved Jasper Miller, who had performed that function for him almost from the beginning of his tenure as vicar general.
A part of him knew that the real Alister had never faced the emptiness of Jasper’s absence, and that Alister himself had died only minutes after his friend fell in battle. But there was also no doubt that another part of him was responding to the knowledge of Jasper’s death as though he were Alister in fact as well as in form. His dual memory seemed to be functioning forward as well as backward in time, progressing almost as if there had been no ending to Alister at all. He had not expected that.
He faltered for just an instant as he mounted the three low steps to the chair which was temporarily his, vividly aware of the sea of royal blue around him, of the brightly muraled walls, the high, hammer-beamed ceiling, the smudge of rainbow light cast from the windows far above his head. His eyes met Jebediah’s, staring down at him hopefully from the right of the chair, the grand master’s strong hands resting steady on the quillons of the sheathed sword of the Order.
Camber spared him a weary, reassuring smile before turning to face the others. To the left, Nathan stepped up behind a narrow table where two clarks were shuffling sheets of parchment and checking lists of names. Johannes stood directly behind the chair, and Dualta beyond, in place of a knight named Lauren, who had been slain. Joram moved quietly to his accustomed place beside Jebediah, eyes downcast.
Camber waited until all of the stragglers had found places around the sides of the chamber, then sat, signaling for the last man in to close and bar the door. The dull shuffle of feet and sheathed swords against stone briefly disturbed the stillness of the chamber as the rest of the company took their seats and settled down.
“Dearest brethren.” Camber let his hands rest gently on the arms of the chair, trying to scan all of them by vision and intuition. “I apologize if the timing of this meeting appears to follow too closely on an event which has touched us all profoundly.” He
took a deep breath. “Except for the urgency of our own situation, and the familial duties which will call one of our most beloved brethren to other responsibilities for a few days, I would have risked delaying this speech for yet a little while.” He glanced at Joram. “However, under the circumstances, I do not feel that any of us would be well served by further postponement of the inevitable. I apologize that my recent ill health did not permit any earlier meeting.”
He glanced briefly at the signet on his hand as he searched for words to tell them what he must. He could hear no sound but guarded breathing in all the packed chamber. The air was close already, tight with anticipation. A part of him wished he were anywhere but here.
“My brothers and friends, I personally face as grave a responsibility in the next few weeks as has ever come to me; for I must leave you in another’s care at a time when change will be but one more disruptive factor in a year already fraught with tragedy for our Order. Beginning with our decision to support the Restoration, with its concurrent dispersal of you all to places of safety; continuing through the capture and subversion of our lamented brother, Humphrey of Gallareaux, may his soul rest in peace—” He crossed himself, a movement which was mirrored immediately by his audience. “—and not ending with Imre’s wanton retaliation against us, because we would not abandon our just cause—we have given much for what we believed. The cost has been high, yet I think we could not have done differently, even had we foreseen the eventual outcome as it is.”
He sighed. “Perhaps the highest price has been paid in human lives. Our battle casualties alone were staggering. Most of you are aware of losses as individuals—the friends and comrades you have lost—but some of you may not be aware of what these losses mean to the Order: yet another legacy of our dispersal to separate places. Jebediah, would you please give us your latest estimation of our precise losses in men?”
Jebediah’s face did not change expression—he was too good a soldier for that—but Camber could see his tension in the whitened knuckles on the sword beside him.
The Legends of Camber of Culdi Trilogy Page 60
