Saint Camber

by Katherine Kurtz

  “A simple ‘thank you’ will suffice,” Cinhil replied, looking very smug. “I actually find it rather hard to believe, myself—not the vestments, for they were made to my specifications, but the fact that I seem to have you finally at a loss for words.”

  “I—You do, indeed, Sire. But, these are far too rich for me. They should belong to a great cathedral, or—”

  “Or to the master of a great cathedral, such as you are about to become,” Cinhil interjected. “Don’t argue with me about this, Alister. Of course, I realize that such vestments cannot be worn just every day. For one thing, they’re entirely too heavy and beastly hot, as you’ll discover. So Sorle has also brought some more-usual sets.”

  At his signal, Sorle unwrapped the rest of the package and stood aside. Rich silk brocades of emerald green and white gleamed in ordered folds from the fire-lit chair, touched here and there with more sedate embroidery. Camber could only shake his head.

  “You do me too great an honor, Sire,” he finally said, fighting down the guilty feelings he was experiencing—for it was Alister to whom Cinhil had just made so revealing a gift—Alister to whom Cinhil had, in effect, finally offered a trusting hand. Alister, not Camber.

  Yet, who was Camber, now?

  Cinhil, unaware of the inner conflict of the man he had just honored, merely signaled the servants to withdraw.

  “I give you only what is your due,” he said quietly, “and perhaps share a little selfishly what can never be mine in fact again. Nay, I am resigned to that, Father,” he went on, as Camber looked disturbed. “I told you that before. And you offered to share a little of your priesthood with me, if I would share my kingship with you. Do you remember?”

  Camber nodded, drawing the memory from the part of him which was Alister. “I meant it,” he said softly.

  “Then I intend to hold you at your word,” Cinhil murmured. “I will not stop you from going to Grecotha. You may go and set up your diocese. You may have several months, if you like. The archbishop will expect it, and it will take me that long to get things straightened out here—the prisoner ransoms, formation of a council—all the things I should have done on my own before, the things a king should do.

  “But, when they’re done, I shall call you back. I shall call you back to sit at my side and help me make the laws by which I’ll govern this kingdom that your Deryni colleagues have given to me. I didn’t want it, Alister. God knows I didn’t. But now that I have it, even I can recognize my responsibilities. And, somewhat selfishly, I admit, I can ask you to help me through some of the difficult times, when I sit alone and brood in my chambers about all the things I’ve already told you far too many times. Will you do that for me?”

  Camber laced his fingers together and studied them with downcast eyes. “Is that what you really wish, Cinhil?”

  “I think so. Things will certainly be more pleasant for everyone else if I settle down and start doing my job.”

  “And what of the king’s pleasure?” Camber asked quietly.

  “The king’s pleasure?” Cinhil laughed bitterly. “The king’s pleasure will have to be confined to mere satisfaction that I’m doing the best I can—even if I would rather be anywhere else, back in my monastery, where we both know I’ll never be allowed to go again.”

  “If you could go back, would you?” Camber asked, looking up wistfully. “I mean, if, right now, this very instant, with all other things as they are, you could be magically transported back to your old cell at Saint Foillan’s—would you go?”

  Cinhil lowered his eyes. “No,” he whispered. “Because it could never be the same—I realize that now. If, in the beginning, I’d refused to go along, if I’d been steadfast—but, not now. I made my choice, even if it seemed like no choice at that time, and now I have to pay the consequences. One day, perhaps God will forgive me.”

  “You still insist that you sinned, by taking up your crown?”

  “What else? You’ve seen my babes, Alister. You’ve seen that sad young woman who came to be my bride—I, whose only bride should have been the Church. Now, in my own poor, bumbling way, I have to go on, and make the best of things for them, too, at least so far as that’s possible. Perhaps one day my sons will learn to rule more wisely than I am likely to do, with this frail, flawed clay.”

  As he held out hands which trembled now, Camber sighed and laid an arm around Cinhil’s shoulders. After a moment, Cinhil looked up again.

  “Forgive me, Father. I didn’t mean to bring my maudlin moods to this most happy of days for you. Perhaps you see why I need you near me.”

  “I shall try always to be near when you need me, Sire,” Camber said. “When you call, be assured that I shall come as soon as I can. I could count no greater worldly honor than to serve my Lord and King.”

  “Thank you. I shall try not to let that service interfere with that other duty which we both owe to a higher Lord,” Cinhil said, finally managing a smile. “But I should go now and let you finish your preparations. You will wear the new vestments this morning, will you not?”

  “If you wish it, Sire.” Camber smiled. “I only hope I shan’t outshine my brother bishops too much. Archbishop Anscom, I know, has access to the cathedral treasures, but poor Father Robert may be totally overshadowed.”

  “You need not worry for Robert Oriss,” Cinhil returned smugly, pausing in the doorway. “After all, the revival of the second archbishopric in Gwynedd is also a momentous occasion. I’ve already delivered a similar set of vestments to him.”

  “I see.”

  “Of course, they aren’t the same as yours. You and he are very different men.”

  “I shan’t argue with that.”

  “And frankly,” Cinhil concluded, just before he disappeared behind the door, “I think it’s just as well. I don’t think I could cope with two of you, Alister.”

  “Bless you, Sire!” Camber chuckled as the door closed with a click.

  He wondered what Cinhil would think if he ever found out there were two Alisters, at least after a fashion.

  An hour later, on the stroke of Terce precisely, Camber squinted in the sunlight of the cathedral close and waited for his part of the procession to begin moving. To either side of him, Joram and Father Nathan stood respectful attendance, ready to escort him when the time came. He eased the weight of his new vestments on his shoulders and stifled a yawn as he watched the beginning of the procession start filing up the steps and into the church. The voices of the cathedral choir, deep inside the reach of stone and glass and timber, were discernible only as a low, muffled echo. Conversation in the close itself had ceased as the column started moving.

  Cinhil had been right about the vestments, Camber decided, as he shifted from one foot to the other and tried not to appear as uncomfortable as he felt. The robes were heavy, and they were hot—and Camber did not even wear the great jeweled cope and miter yet. The heat of the day was still to come, with the sun burning in a cloudless sky. Already he could feel sweat forming beneath the heavy alb and chasuble.

  With a stoic sigh, he turned inward to seek and find the controls which would lower his body temperature just slightly. He wondered how his human compatriot, Robert Oriss, was faring in the heat—Oriss, who had no recourse to Deryni disciplines.

  Ahead of them, feet shuffled and the line began to move. Most of the other bishops of Gwynedd and the neighboring areas had come to attend the ceremony, many of whom Camber had just met for the first time today, as Alister as well as Camber: Niallan of Dhassa, the traditionally neutral and essentially independent bishop who would be working closely with the new Archbishop of Rhemuth; young Dermot of Cashien, whose uncle had been bishop before him and was whispered to have been more in kinship than uncle to his brother’s child; Ulliam of Nyford, head of the southernmost diocese, who must cope with the ruin left by Imre’s abortive attempt to build yet a third capital in Ulliam’s port city—and four of Gwynedd’s six itinerant bishops, with no fixed sees, whose faces Camber was just beginnin
g to associate reliably with names: Davet and Kai and Eustace and Turlough.

  All of the assisting prelates wore full pontificals, carried the stylized shepherds’ staffs of their offices with the crooks turned inward, since they were in Anscom’s jurisdiction.

  And ahead of the bishops, just now disappearing through the vast double doors, were others of the procession in colorful array: candle bearers and crucifers, thurifers swinging fragrant censers on long golden chains; the ecclesiastical knights, Michaelines and others, in their mantles of azure and scarlet and gold; surpliced priests bearing the regalia which would be bestowed on the two bishops to be made.

  Next came the mitered abbots of Gwynedd—Crevan Allyn of the Michaelines in his cloak of blue; Dom Emrys of the Order of Saint Gabriel, white-haired, white-robed shadow of a man, gliding wraithlike in the invisible mantle of his Deryniness; the masters of the Ordo Verbi Dei, the Brotherhood of Saint Joric, and a handful of others—and then the bishops.

  Finally, it was Camber’s turn, to climb slowly the worn cathedral steps and pass into the shade, Joram and Nathan catching up the edges of his chasuble as he walked, to follow two small boys who bore their golden candlesticks as though these were the most precious objects they had ever touched. Hands folded reverently before him, eyes downcast to minimize visual distractions, Camber stilled his mind and prayed for grace and guidance. As they moved up the aisle, followed finally by Oriss and then by Anscom and his attendants, the strains of the introit reverberated joyously among the columns and arches and galleries:

  “Fidelis sermo, si quis episcopatum desiderat …” Faithful is the saying, If a man desire the office of bishop, he desireth a good work. A bishop then must be blameless …

  And from his favored place in the right of the choir, a restless King Cinhil watched and brooded, dreaming of days gone by, longing to be even the humblest part of that sacred company.

  But on his head was a royal crown, and at his side stood a wife and queen, and all around was the panoply of a regal court—worldly glory, for him who would have preferred a homespun habit and a simple monkish cell.

  He shifted impatiently as the bishops came into view, watching until one grizzled gray head stood out among the others, near the end. On him the king fastened his attention, studying the seamed, craggy face and wondering what really went on behind the pale, sea-ice eyes. As the bishops passed him, to pause before the High Altar and genuflect before taking their places, he breathed a prayer of thanksgiving for his new-found friend and confidant. He bowed his head and knelt as Archbishop Anscom mounted the steps to the altar and began the Mass.

  The liturgy progressed apace through the Gospel readings. Then, when the choir had sung the Veni Creator, invoking the presence of the Spirit upon those about to be consecrated, Robert Oriss and Alister Cullen stood before the throne of the Primate of All Gwynedd and were examined on their fitness for the offices they were about to assume:

  Would they be faithful and constant in proclaiming the Word of God? Would they sustain and protect the people of God and guide them in the ways of salvation?

  Would they show compassion to the poor and to strangers and to all who were in need? Would they seek out the sheep who had strayed, and gather them back into the fold?

  Would they love with the charity of a father and a brother all those whom God placed in their care, even at the cost of their own mortal lives?

  They would.

  Laying their hands upon the cathedral’s most sacred relics, they vowed to discharge to the end of their lives the office about to be passed on to them by the imposition of hands. Prostrating themselves before the High Altar in humility, as all priests had done from time immemorial before assuming further holy orders, they prayed for the grace to keep their promises, while the archbishop and his clergy knelt and recited the traditional litany of saints.

  Then, rising only long enough to move before the archbishop’s throne, the two men knelt again, side by side, there to receive the sacramental imprint of prelacy, the apostolic laying on of hands, first by the archbishop, and then by all the other attending bishops.

  With the open Gospel laid across their shoulders by two assisting bishops, they were sealed with holy chrism on head and hands, then invested with the symbols of their new offices: the Gospel, that they might teach; the ring of amethyst, as a seal of faithfulness with the Church they served; the miter, crown of earthly authority, but also weight upon the brow to remind that the title of bishop derived not from his rank, but from his duty—for it was the part of a bishop to serve, rather than to rule.

  And last, the crozier, the pastoral staff—sign of the Shepherd’s office, to watch over and guard the flocks given them to govern in God’s Name.

  Following a Mass of Thanksgiving, the new bishops were led through the cathedral to bless the congregation for the first time, while the triumphant strains of the Te Deum reverberated among the vaulted arches.

  Afterward, in the great hall of the castle, King Cinhil held a reception and feast for the new bishops and their brethren—as lavish a celebration as had yet been held during his reign. The event was not the glittering spectacle of the Festillic years. Cinhil instinctively shied away from any hint of that; and besides, the ways of worldly formality were still alien to him, and would always make him a little uncomfortable. Still, for Cinhil, it was festive.

  Seating Bishop Cullen to his right, and Archbishops Oriss and Anscom to his left, on either side of his queen, Cinhil presided over a hall of all Gwynedd’s highest clergy and baronage, drinking the health of his two new bishops and appearing almost happy, especially once his queen had retired and he was left to the company of his male friends.

  Camber left for Grecotha the next morning—a long day’s ride stretched out to three, because of the panoply in which a prince of the Church was expected to travel for the first entry into his new benefice. Cinhil had granted him an escort of a dozen knights to guard him on his way, and these were augmented amply by a score of the archbishop’s own crack household troops, who would stay on at Grecotha to become his own. In addition came a full staff of chaplains, clarks, and other servants who would assist the new master of Grecotha in setting his domain in order. Domestic servants had already been sent ahead, a week before, to reopen what served for a bishop’s residence and to provision it for occupation.

  The next weeks passed quickly, as summer eased into autumn and the daylight hours diminished. The Diocese of Grecotha, one of the oldest in the Eleven Kingdoms, was centered in the heart of the great university town of the same name, and had been without a vicar for more than five years. As a consequence, its new bishop found himself much occupied with pastoral duties.

  There were ecclesiastical courts to convene, confirmations to be administered, priests to ordain. He must make official visitations to every parish and abbey and school under his jurisdiction, to ascertain that all were in competent hands and running as they should, and take steps to correct, if they were not. He had also to perform the routine duties of any ordinary priest: daily celebration of Mass, administering of other sacraments—baptism, confession, marriage, extreme unction.

  All of these, well-known to Alister but new and awesome to him, Camber performed, and learned much of himself and his fellow man in their performance. He found himself falling into bed at night to sleep a dreamless sleep, his physical strength continually shored up by his Deryni abilities. He wondered how ordinary men functioned under the pressures of the job, with only their human resources to rely upon, and decided that it could only be through the gift of Divine grace. He marvelled, under the circumstances, that he was able to keep abreast of it at all.

  And when Camber was not traveling, he was spending the bulk of his waking hours reviewing the administrative records of his diocese and directing his assistants in the setting up of a more efficient governing system. The office of Dean was reinstated almost immediately, the appointment going to a quiet but competent human priest named Father Willowen, who seemed sin
glehandedly to have stood between the diocese and total administrative collapse for the entire five years of the see’s vacancy.

  One of the most appalling discoveries which Camber made, and which was in no way Willowen’s fault, was the deplorable state of the cathedral archives. To Camber, reared with a reverence for the written word which approached that of his religious faith, the state of neglect of these important records was inexcusable.

  The fault, he soon discovered, was not a recent one. It lay with the confusion which had followed the separation of the famed Varnarite School from the cathedral chapter more than a century and a half ago, when the ultra-liberal Varnarites had taken their library—and, Camber suspected, a great part of the cathedral’s—to new quarters in another part of the city. Never really properly reorganized since then, the present records showed glaring lapses, and infuriating juxtapositions of fiscal, canonical, and secular material. Some of the disorganization seemed almost methodical.

  He turned Willowen and a handful of monks and clarks loose on the project, and order slowly began to emerge from bibliophilic chaos. Willowen was a martinet when it came to overseeing a task of this magnitude, and hounded his compatriots unmercifully if they did not work with enough speed or accuracy to please him. Oddly enough, no one seemed to resent Willowen’s manner, perhaps realizing that he acted thus because he cared; and the work got done.

  Camber took to spending time alone in the older archive sections himself, for his skill in ancient languages was useful in deciphering some of the more obscure entries buried on back shelves. One find which he did not share with Willowen and his monks was a very ancient cache of scrolls dating from long before the Varnarite separation, in a language which even Camber could read only with difficulty. He had no time to explore these in detail when he found them, but the few words and phrases which he had managed to scan during his initial examination were enough to convince him that no human should ever see these scrolls. One of them, of a somewhat later date than most of the others, seemed to tie in with some of the ancient records which he and Evaine had been studying while still in Caerrorie. In another, he had found mention of the Protocol of Orin!