King Javan’s Year

by Katherine Kurtz

  “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.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-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.”

  “And if you had made him go, and they’d decided to bleed him to death, he’d be just as dead, and you’d be blaming yourself just as much,” Guiscard replied. “It wasn’t just your decision at work here. It was Faelan’s and Paulin’s and whoever actually killed him.”

  “But he died for nothing! Even if he’d gone, they couldn’t have gotten anything out of him. He didn’t ask to be involved in any of this. All he wanted was to be a good priest.”

  “And wasn’t he?” Guiscard said softly. “Isn’t there something in Holy Writ that says something about the good shepherd laying down his life for his sheep?”

  “But they hanged him, Guiscard, like a common criminal! Like Judas. They even left him thirty pieces of silver!”

  “That’s what they did,” Guiscard agreed, “but it isn’t why Faelan died.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I think Faelan died because he chose not to risk letting himself be intimidated into betraying you. That’s why he wouldn’t put himself into the Custodes’ hands again. He wasn’t afraid for his life—don’t you understand? He’d surrendered that to God long before you and he ever met. Don’t you suppose his killers came to realize that? And once they knew he couldn’t be bought, even by fear, that he wouldn’t risk betraying you, they decided they’d at least take out their spite for betraying them.”

  “He’s still dead,” Javan murmured. “And he’s still lying here in unconsecrated ground, with only a pauper’s shroud around him. I know he isn’t here, Guiscard, but it isn’t right that anyone should be able to do this to an innocent man. Who’ll be next? Are they going to start whittling away at everyone I care about who tries to remain loyal to me?”

  He asked Joram the same questions later that night, when he had relayed all the events of the past few days. Guiscard had come with him this time and sat sympathetically at his side as Joram and Niallan and Jesse digested what the king had told them.

  “I certainly share your grief over Father Faelan,” Joram said after a moment. “And I think you’re right to fear that this may be only the beginning. If they’ll kill a priest and make it look like suicide, they certainly wouldn’t hesitate to go after others close to you. I’d worry for Oriel’s safety first. If they’ve got their own Deryni again, especially a willing one, they won’t want rivals at court potentially to undo his work.”

  Javan gave a sharp, bitter laugh. “Short of locking him up like his family, what do you suggest I do? I moved him physically closer to my quarters, where Hubert or the others can’t get at him as readily, and I’ve got one of my sharpest knights assigned essentially as a full-time bodyguard. Unless I personally send one of my own men for him, Oriel doesn’t stir out of his quarters except with Sir Gavin to escort him.”

  Joram nodded. “You’ve probably done all you can, then. Of course, if Rhun brings Sitric back, the picture changes yet again. With Custodes backing, I suspect even the rather pedestrian Sitric could become formidable.”

  “So, what do I do?” Javan demanded. “Send Oriel from Court? He won’t go, so long as his family is held hostage—and Paulin’s men aren’t about to let them leave.”

  “No, they aren’t,” Joram agreed. “But there may be another way to approach that problem. Guiscard, how many hostages are still at Rhemuth?”

  The young knight raised an eyebrow. “Maybe half a dozen, counting Oriel’s wife and daughter.”

  “Who are the others?” Niallan asked.

  “Well, there’d be Sitric’s family—a mother and sister, I think—and Ursin O’Carroll and his wife and son, of course. I guess that’s actually seven.”

  “Only seven?” Niallan sighed and shook his head. “I remember when there were several dozen. May their souls all rest in peace.” He crossed himself with a heavy hand, and the others followed suit. “But it could be worse, I suppose. I assume the survivors are all Deryni? Not counting Ursin, of course.”

  Guiscard made a grimace, considering. “Actually, no. I think Ursin’s wife may be human—which also makes the son problematical. He would have been very young when the hostages were first taken, perhaps even an infant in arms, so they wouldn’t have tested him with merasha. I do hear that they test Ursin regularly, just to be certain his powers haven’t come back.”

  “Lord, how they do fear us!” Niallan sighed again. “But that’s nothing new. But something has occurred to me that just might work. Sire, you know how Ursin lost his powers. You know about Master Revan, out by Valoret.”

  Javan cocked his head quizzically at the bishop. “Of course I do. I was there.”

  “Yes, indeed,” Niallan said with a faint smile. “Now, here’s what I propose …”

  It took more than a fortnight and several return visits to the Michaeline sanctuary before the plan took final shape, for parts of it must be approved by men not resident there. It was a bold scenario that Niallan proposed, but it might actually result in getting the hostages out of Rhemuth by the following spring. To begin paving the way, Javan even swallowed his pride and pretended to make his peace with Paulin over the Faelan affair, so that a new chaplain might be appointed and the royal household coul
d settle into a regular routine again.

  Unfortunately, Javan was given no opportunity to begin implementing his plan, for the very day he had intended to start laying the groundwork for it, very early in November, an exhausted courier arrived in Rhemuth demanding to be taken to the king.

  Javan was in the great hall, observing a routine session of the local assize court, when a guard brought the man in. Guiscard and Charlan were sitting behind and to either side of him at the left of the dais, Lord Jerowen actually presiding over the court. Most of the several dozen others present were either functionaries of the court or suppliants. In anticipation of the Council meeting scheduled for later in the afternoon, Lords Albertus, Rhun, and Udaut were huddled around a charcoal brazier in one of the window embrasures, for the weather had turned in the past week. Aside from them, however, not one of the other lords of Council had chosen to attend. It was a very minor Court.

  Lord Jerowen stopped speaking and Charlan and Guiscard got to their feet as the messenger staggered down the length of the great hall, heavily supported by a worried-looking guard. With a little moan, the man collapsed to his knees before the king and pulled a creased and travel-stained packet from inside his tunic, offering it with a trembling hand. The bright vermilion seal proclaimed the sender to be Lord Ainslie, with whom Rhys Michael was currently serving in Grecotha.

  “Get this man something to drink,” Javan commanded, breaking the seal across with his fingers when it would not lift from one side. “Did you bring this from Grecotha?”

  “Aye, Sire. Four days ago … Hunting party went wrong,” the man managed to gasp out, swaying on his knees. “Prince Rhys Michael abducted … Sir Jason dead, Lord Ainslie very bad … Brigands … I rode as quickly as I could.”

  He pitched forward then, but Guiscard was already bending down to catch him under one arm and ease him to the floor, snapping his fingers in the direction of several squires, who were scurrying for wine and a cup. Javan had gotten to his feet at the news, all the color draining from his face.