Saint Camber

by Katherine Kurtz

  “I must leave your service now, Your Grace. I hope you will not take it amiss, but each of us must follow his own conscience, and my goal is clear now. You have shown me where my duty lies.”

  “Guaire, it isn’t necessary to leave,” Camber began, knowing that if Guaire did leave, it would be even more difficult to follow the progress of the incipient Camber cult. “I will not interfere with your work. If you wish to take vows with this new Order—what did you call it?”

  “I did not, Your Grace, but it will be called the Servants of Saint Camber,” Guaire said calmly.

  “The—Servants of Saint Camber,” Camber repeated, controlling a tendency of his voice to crack with the words. “If—if you wish to do that, I shall not stand in your way. Men of many orders can work together for me. While I may not agree with your aims, I respect your right to try to do what you think you must. I should hate to think that I have driven you away by my inflexibility.”

  “You have not driven me away, Your Grace,” Guaire said, getting to his feet and glancing at Joram again. “Nor has Father Joram. But it’s time I went. There are things which must be done, which I can help, God willing it be so. My brothers and sisters have the right to expect my undivided attention. ’Tis time I made a full-time commitment to Camber’s cause.”

  “Very well, then. If you must, you must,” Camber replied. “But think about what you are doing, and why. You could be mistaken, you know.”

  “I do not think so, Your Grace. May I have your leave to go now? I’ll gather my belongings and be away by noon.”

  “You have it, son, and my prayers that God will guide you in the right paths,” Camber whispered.

  Guaire bowed and turned to go toward the door. As his hands worked the latch, Camber made one last, desperate appeal.

  “Guaire—”

  “Your Grace?” Guaire paused in the doorway to look at his bishop a final time.

  “Guaire, I don’t know who your friends are in this venture, but please pass this on to them for me. I think you’re wrong. I think you’re deluding yourselves, building hopes on idle wishes. Your intentions to follow in Camber’s tasks are noble, and I think he would have been pleased; but do not make of him something he was not.”

  “Good-bye, Your Grace,” Guaire whispered, and turned away to disappear behind the closing door.

  With so inauspicious a beginning, the rest of the morning could hardly have been expected to go smoothly; nor did it. No sooner had Guaire had time to get out of earshot than Joram erupted in appalled horror.

  What had Camber been thinking, to let Guaire leave? The man must be brought back, his mind probed to discover the exact threat of this new order calling itself the Servants of Saint Camber. Servants of Saint Camber, indeed! It was blasphemy for such an order even to be contemplated. Guaire had witnessed no miracle!

  But Camber remained calm, even in his own dismay. Forming a close but emphatic link with his son, he insisted that Joram review all the same alternatives which he himself had considered while he talked with Guaire, making him see precisely why they could not afford to interfere overmuch.

  Camber’s son and his very good friend must have supremely logical reasons for opposing Camber’s canonization—though, obviously, those could not be the real ones—but even ordinary methods of resistance must be employed prudently. On no account must Camber’s own part reach the point where Alister Cullen came into question. The chancellor-bishop was getting on far too well with the king just now to risk any hint of scandal.

  Joram had to concede the wisdom of that observation. Even he could not fault the progress made by Cinhil during the past six months, much of it at his father’s urging. The king’s entire attitude toward the business of governing seemed to have improved greatly.

  But how would Cinhil react when he learned of the movement to canonize Camber? Suppose the Servants somehow found out about Cinhil’s version of a miracle? If they forced the matter to a formal inquiry, even the king would not be able to deny under oath what he had seen. The fact that he must be regarded as a reluctant witness regarding Camber’s alleged sainthood would only tend to support the Servants’ allegations.

  For that matter, what of Dualta, who was far more ripe for pumping about a Camberian miracle than Cinhil? Joram was willing to bet that his father did not even know where Dualta was!

  On that point, it was Camber’s turn to concede. He did not know where Dualta was—though he had a vague impression that the young knight might have been sent along on Baron Hildred’s horse-finding expedition, since he was known to have a good eye for horseflesh. Did Joram have some reason for suspecting that Dualta had talked?

  Not exactly. But Dualta had spoken with Joram several times in the month immediately after the incident, and Joram knew he had not forgotten it. After those initial discussions, in which Joram tried to discourage Dualta’s awed recall, the knight had come no more to Joram.

  What contacts might Dualta have made in the intervening time? Suppose he, like Guaire, had met the increasingly evident Dom Queron and confessed all? By now, the story of how “Saint Camber” had healed the Bishop of Grecotha could already be part and parcel of a budding Camberian hagiography. If so, then all who were present that night could be implicated.

  Reluctantly, Camber had to admit the possibility, though he did not think it likely. Had Guaire known anything of the Cinhil witnessing, he would surely have confronted the man said to be the object of the miracle. The fact that he had not, argued well for the probability that he and the Servants did not know. Of course, lack of that information would not necessarily stop the Servants of Camber. Saints had been proclaimed before on far flimsier evidence than martyrdom at the hands of an evil sorceress and supposed appearance in a miraculous-seeming dream.

  The prospect of sainthood did not please Camber, and the living of a partial lie disturbed him. Still, if he must bear this cross in order to see Cinhil’s education and guidance through to their proper ends, then he would do it. He did not have to like it, and did not; but, like many others, he would learn to live with it, if he must.

  Joram found it difficult to understand how his father, now a priest and bishop, could dismiss deliberate religious hypocrisy. But he did agree to abide by Camber’s direction and to temper his own vigorous opposition with prudence, for the greater good.

  However, they agreed that further discussion between the two of them would serve no useful purpose just then. Accordingly, when they had composed themselves sufficiently to venture outside Camber’s apartments, they made their way to the archbishop’s chapel without delay. Anscom was waiting impatiently, so the two Deryni, father and son, did not attempt to make explanations before Mass. Vesting quickly, each used the order and serenity of the liturgy to restore his own inner calm, emerging renewed and reassured.

  When all had been properly concluded, and they were seated in the archbishop’s solar breaking their fast, they told Anscom everything that had happened, sharing their assorted mental impressions as well as the verbal retelling.

  Anscom, who had received all without interruption after his initial shock, shook his head after sipping from a cup of goat’s milk.

  “Camber, you continue to be a thorn in my side, don’t you? Oh, I know it isn’t really your fault. You’ve done what you had to do. But the problem exists, nonetheless.”

  He made a face at the milk, for he drank it only out of duty to a sensitive stomach, which was churning even more than usual at the morning’s news. Camber did not reply.

  “However,” the archbishop continued, “you can rest assured that no shrine to Saint Camber will be built in my cathedral while I’m archbishop.” He set down his empty cup with a gesture of finality. “As for canonization—well, there’s not much any of us can do to stop a popular folk movement, I suppose, but I will promise to prevent any formal petition from reaching the Council of Bishops.”

  “Thank you, Anscom,” Camber said quietly. “I could not ask for more.”

  A
nscom shrugged. “I wish it were more. Frankly, I don’t see how you can be so calm about it all. I’m sure I should be a bundle of nerves if someone were trying to make a saint of me.”

  Camber gave a wan smile as he buttered a bit of fine white bread. “You’ve seen the rationalizations I’ve had to make, to achieve this state of outward calm,” he said, popping the bread into his mouth. “But what else can I do?” He chewed and swallowed. “Revelation of the truth would completely undermine the progress we’ve made in these past few months. Cinhil is really beginning to think like a king, at last. We haven’t seen his likes for at least a century, so far as potential is concerned. You should see the plans for military reorganization that he and Jeb and I drew up yesterday. They’re brilliant—and most of the input is from Cinhil, not Jeb or me.”

  He nodded thanks as Joram refilled his cup with fragrant brown ale, pausing to drain it by half before continuing.

  “And that’s not all. We’ve only made preliminary notes so far, but some of his ideas for legal reform are truly revolutionary. He’s taken the basic texts that we made him read while he was in the haven, and he’s used them as a jumping-off point to devise plans I’ve never even thought of. Oh, some of them are too theoretical to work, but the point is that he’s learning. He’s starting to think independently, to synthesize new ideas from what we gave him. Sometimes even I have trouble keeping up with him, Anscom.”

  Anscom, who had been eating a slab of cheese with apple slices, wiped his fingers and then his knife on a damask napkin and began cleaning his nails with the tip of the blade. His eyes held a twinkle of amusement.

  “I’m not arguing with you on that point. I know, from my meetings with him, the kinds of things he’s proposing.” He turned his gaze on Joram. “But, what about you, Joram? And Evaine and Rhys? Can the three of you cope with your father becoming a saint, if that’s the price we must pay for our good King Cinhil?”

  Joram put down the piece of bread he had been methodically turning into dough pellets and dusted his hands over his plate.

  “There must be something we can do to stop it, Your Grace.”

  “I agree that there ought to be. Unfortunately, your father’s life and untimely ‘death’ are precisely the stuff of which martyrologies are made. There’s little we can do to stop the talk.”

  “But the hypocrisy of it all!”

  “I know.” Anscom sighed. “But sometimes one can’t afford to be overfastidious. Moral scruples aside, can you handle the rest? For example, what if Guaire and his friends should ask Lady Elinor for permission to enshrine the tomb at Caerrorie?”

  “Oh, God, she wouldn’t let them, would she?”

  “I don’t know. I’m asking you. She’ll not have Evaine and Rhys to rely upon in the future, you know. If Evaine’s appointment as a lady-in-waiting weren’t enough to keep them at court, then Rhys’s confirmation as the queen’s physician certainly will be. Megan is pregnant again, you know.”

  Camber lowered the cup he had been raising to his lips and looked at Anscom in surprise. “So soon? Does Cinhil know yet?”

  Anscom shook his head. “Rhys only confirmed it a few days ago. It will be another boy, if she carries it to term. Needless to say, Rhys’s services will be constantly on call until she’s safely delivered at the end of the summer. However, Joram still hasn’t answered my original question. What will Elinor say if the Servants of Saint Camber ask her permission to enshrine the tomb?”

  “Without coaching, she might agree,” Joram said gloomily. “She was very fond of—Camber.” He looked up at his father, at Anscom, back at Camber again.

  “Father, couldn’t we tell her the truth? She’ll have to know eventually, if you still plan to include the boys.”

  “Eventually, yes; but not yet. Rhys tells me that she’s considering remarriage, and I’m afraid her prospective bridegroom can be a bit of a hothead. If she has to cope with my sainthood, I’d rather she knows nothing she has to be afraid of revealing.”

  “Cousin Jamie?” Joram asked.

  Camber nodded. “Anscom, we’re talking about young James Drummond. You may remember him from the haven. When Cathan was courting Elinor, James was also a suitor. Now that Cathan is gone …” He shrugged. “At any rate, I’ll be very surprised if Elinor doesn’t say yes. The boys need a father, and Elinor needs a husband. The combined resources of Culdi and the Drummond lands will make quite a tidy holding.”

  “But you referred to him as a hothead,” Anscom said. “Do you mean that, if he knew the truth about you, he might let it slip?”

  “Let’s just say that I’d rather not give him that temptation just now,” Camber replied. “I don’t believe in husbands and wives not being able to share totally, if they want to—which means that both of them will have to learn to cope with the comings and goings at Caerrorie like the rest of us. Joram, do you think they can do it?”

  “I suppose,” Joram answered doubtfully. “It certainly isn’t going to be easy, though.”

  “Nothing is ever easy,” Anscom muttered under his breath, “especially where Camber MacRorie is concerned. Camber, it’s a good thing that I know you as well as I do.”

  But the immediate future, at least, was easy. Guaire was gone by the time Camber returned to his quarters, and Joram’s discreet inquiries over the next few days revealed only that Guaire had left Valoret alone and headed southeast. Now they would simply have to wait for Guaire’s next move.

  And so, after warning Evaine and Rhys of what had happened, Camber left for his scheduled visit to Grecotha, resolved not to worry further where worry would do no good.

  He found his neglected see in good hands, and was once more nagged by the suspicion that Willowen of Treshire could get along very well without him. Though the winter had been wet and cold, the see’s holdings had prospered. A bountiful if late harvest and Willowen’s frugal management had left the diocesan granaries still more than half full. Sale of a portion of the excess for seed and flour would net a tidy profit for the recovering cathedral treasury. Lambing and calfing were also at a record high.

  Final refurbishing of the episcopal residence had been completed only the month before, balky drains and all. Several leaks in the cathedral roof had been repaired, using lead salvaged from a collapsed and abandoned chapel in the chapter complex. Inside, the choir stalls had been refinished and repaired, and all the statues of the sanctuary and side chapels cleaned and regilded. The great nave glistened when the bishop entered to celebrate his first Mass upon his return.

  But of greatest interest to Camber, personally, was the progress made on the cathedral archives. Willowen had embarked upon a library exchange program with the Varnarite rector who was his counterpart. All through the cold, dark winter, ten scribes each from the Varnarites and the cathedral chapter spent most of their waking hours in their opposites’ library, piecing together chronologies and copying missing portions of important records and chronicles of interest to both groups. Their diligence did much to fill in some of the gaps in the history surrounding the original schism.

  Willowen even found a chest full of manuscripts penned in the ancient script which only his bishop could readily read. These he saved for Camber, who took them into his private quarters to begin translating in his spare time.

  Camber returned to Valoret on schedule, well pleased with the state of his episcopal affairs, only to find the gathering court in an uproar over the impending arrival of Earl Sighere, who all now knew had subdued the principality of Kheldour. Barons Torcuill and Udaut had brought Sighere’s acceptance of a springtime visit months before; but as the time grew near, and no new word came directly from the powerful earl, reports of his actions and intentions became more varied and more speculative.

  Sighere marched toward Valoret with an army at his back—no, he came in peace. No, Sighere brought only an escort with him, but his army approached by another route for a surprise attack, swelled to double its previous size by newly hired Kheldish and Torenthi mercenarie
s.

  Camber counseled a postponement of judgment, but some there were who could not accept that. Paranoia was a very popular sport at court that spring—which was perhaps understandable, given Gwynedd’s past year.

  But when Sighere did appear before the gates of Valoret, bright on the morning of the Ides of March, as he had promised, he rode with only a modest escort of fifty knights. Still, their initial impression could have been construed by even the level-headed as warlike. Sighere’s fifty men were heavily armed, as was their leader; even their horses were caparisoned in leather battle bardings and steel chamfrons. Earl Sighere himself did not improve upon that ominous image, riding silent and distant behind a closed war helm, the coronet of his rank nearly obscured by a veritable explosion of sable ostrich plumes. Nor were the couped dragon heads on his scarlet shield reassuring.

  But an unarmed herald bore Sighere’s personal banner at his left side, while his war banner followed behind him; and that should have told them something. Also, Sighere readily consented to leave all but ten of his knights outside the city gates, if those remaining ten might retain their arms to provide suitable escort before the king.

  Cinhil agreed, with apparently more confidence in Sighere’s good will than most of his retainers felt, and called his court together to receive the earl. For this occasion, even Megan was at his side, though looking a little pale in the early stages of her pregnancy.

  Jebediah stood in the privileged position of earl marshal, on the top step of the dais and on the king’s right side, minus his helmet but otherwise in full Michaeline battle attire, one gloved hand resting competently on his sword hilt. Udaut, the constable, who had gone to treat with Sighere months before and still was unsure just what decision the earl had reached, waited midway between Jebediah and the king, likewise mailed and armed, Gwynedd’s great sword at rest beneath his gauntleted hands.