King Javan’s Year

by Katherine Kurtz

  “But it’s my brother’s life that’s in the balance.”

  “The prince should feel honored and humbly grateful if called to a martyr’s crown,” Paulin replied coldly. “Suppression of the Deryni is ordained by God Himself, for the salvation of His people and the greater glory of His Church on earth. We will make no concessions to the enemies of God!”

  In the face of such arguments, Javan could offer no further rebuttals. Later that evening he mulled the dilemma in the privacy his own quarters, with only Charlan and Guiscard for company. They were waiting for the return of Guiscard’s father, who had gone to inquire of Joram regarding the demand. Javan knew that his Deryni allies were chafing increasingly under the tightening strictures against those of their race, but he could not imagine that they would really threaten the life of their king’s brother.

  “There’s no reason for Ansel to do this,” Guiscard said as the minutes stretched into an hour and Etienne did not return. “It will only increase ill will toward Deryni, especially if they harm the prince. Doesn’t he realize that any changes made to the law under duress would only be reversed yet again, once the prince was safe?”

  “The desperate act of a desperate man, perhaps,” Charlan offered. “Maybe the opportunity came up to abduct the prince, and it seemed like a good idea at the time, but then he didn’t know what to do after that.”

  Javan shook his head. “That wasn’t the impression I got from the letter Tomais sent. The attack was well planned. They knew exactly who—”

  A knock at the door brought Guiscard bounding to his feet to admit his father. Etienne was shaking his head as he came into the room and pulled up a chair at the table where the others sat.

  “You aren’t going to believe this,” he muttered, including them all in his glance. “Joram doesn’t know anything about this, and neither does Ansel.”

  “What?!”

  “Oh, Ansel certainly knew that the prince had been abducted—Joram got word to him as soon as he was told—but that’s all Ansel knew. He was nowhere near Grecotha when the abduction took place—though he’s been combing that area since, trying to find some trace. He’s still out there, but the others were meeting about it when I arrived: Joram and Jesse and Bishop Niallan and his Healer, Dom Rickart. When I showed Joram the letter, he went a little pale, then passed it around the table for the others’ inspection. They all agreed that it wasn’t Ansel’s signature or seal.”

  “Then that means—”

  “It means that someone,” Guiscard said, before the king could finish, “is trying to further discredit Deryni, and fueling the attempt with the threat to your brother. I have several shrewd guesses who that might be. Oh, it’s clever. Just the sort of thing I might expect your enemies to come up with. What do you want to bet that Paulin somehow is behind this?”

  “But Jason and several other men were killed in the attack, and Ainslie was nearly killed,” Javan protested. “Surely, even Paulin—”

  “Would Paulin have your personal supporters killed?” Etienne said. “Why not? Especially if it could be made to look like the work of Deryni. It would certainly strengthen his campaign to ensure that the Ramos Statutes are not altered. And I hardly need remind you of Father Faelan.”

  “But—surely it isn’t possible,” Javan murmured, shaking his head. “Dear God, you don’t think they’d kill Rhysem, do you?”

  When no one answered, Javan stood abruptly and went over to the window. It was raining hard, and he set one hand flat on one of the thick windowpanes, staring into the darkness beyond.

  “We don’t know for certain that Paulin is responsible,” he said after a long moment. “But Rhysem has been taken hostage. We know that’s true, because they sent back his earring, and he never takes it off.

  “So the question is, who is holding him?” he whispered. “Where is he now? And what are they going to do to him?”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  He shall direct his counsel and knowledge, and in his secrets shall he meditate.

  —Ecclesiasticus 39:7

  Even as Javan asked the questions, a messenger bearing at least some of the answers was making his way through the streets of Rhemuth, though his information was not intended for Javan. The same man had discharged the first part of his commission earlier in the day by entrusting a sealed missive to a peasant for delivery to the castle—the very missive now giving the king such cause for concern. Earlier he had travelled in the unadorned harness of an ordinary man-at-arms, but before leaving the inn where he had spent the afternoon and evening holed up, he donned the red-fringed white sash and the black surcoat charged with a red moline cross and haloed lion-head that were the uniform of a Custodes knight.

  It was raining hard. Wearing a plain black mantle over all to shield him from the weather, the man aroused little notice as he made his way up the cobbled street to the cathedral precincts and the archbishop’s palace adjoining it. Within minutes of presenting himself, he was being shown into the presence of his superior, Paulin of Ramos, who had quarters permanently set aside in the palace for his use. The Vicar General’s apartments adjoined those allocated to the Archbishop of Valoret when he was resident in Rhemuth. The two had been sharing a flask of good Fianna wine in Paulin’s dayroom, speculating on how the king would eventually respond to the ransom demand.

  “Ah, Lord Vantry, is it not?” Paulin said as the knight approached and bent one knee to kiss his ring.

  “Aye, Vicar General.” The man rose, inclining his head to Archbishop Hubert, who was sitting just beyond Paulin, close beside the fire. “Your Grace.”

  “I hope you have brought news from Lord Albertus,” Hubert said as the man drew a sealed packet from under his surcoat and handed it to Paulin.

  “Aye, my lord, but I fear there is little to report. The prince has not yet been found. I have a missive for the king as well, but Lord Albertus bade me deliver this one first.”

  “You will wait while I read this,” Paulin said, gesturing toward a chair as he broke Albertus’ seal and unfolded the stiff parchment. “I may wish to send an additional message to the king. You have been with the party still searching for the prince?”

  “Aye, my lord.”

  “Sit, sit.”

  Despite Paulin’s urging, the messenger waited until his superior had sat before perching gingerly on the edge of the chair he had been offered, not nervous at what his superior might read but clearly anxious to be on his way. No salutation headed the missive, but the hand was familiar to Paulin.

  The man who carries this letter is utterly trustworthy, but knows nothing of its contents. I am reliably informed that the rescue went entirely according to plan. The prince now lies at Culdi, recovering from his injuries, which were slight. He suspects nothing. His host will do all in his power to ensure that further developments proceed as planned. Meanwhile, let us trust that the king’s energies will be well occupied pondering the contents of the letter he will have received earlier today. The additional message he is shortly to receive will do nothing to alleviate his fears. I respectfully suggest that you burn this when you have read it.—A.

  Paulin suppressed a smile as he passed the letter to Hubert. To Lord Vantry, the exchange would appear to confirm sober concern for what was unfolding.

  “Thank you, Lord Vantry. You may go. Say to the king that I regret that Lord Albertus’ efforts have thus far been unsuccessful, but assure his Highness that the Order will continue to do all within its power to locate and free his brother.”

  “I will, my lord,” Vantry replied, coming to his feet to kiss his superior’s hand again.

  When he had gone, Paulin took the letter from Hubert, read it again, then consigned it to the flames, where it curled and crackled as it began to burn.

  “With the king still having access to a Truth-Reader,” Hubert said softly, “it was prudent of Albertus to send a messenger who can tell only what he has been told to say and believes it to be true. Realistically, however, how long do you th
ink the truth can be kept from the king?”

  “Almost indefinitely, so long as Manfred is successful at intercepting any letters the prince may try to send from Culdi,” Paulin said. “But frankly, my lord, I hardly think the prince will be over-eager to leave, once he realizes what forbidden charms Culdi has to offer.”

  Prince Rhys Michael Haldane began to discover those forbidden charms the very next morning. He woke to the sound of his bed-curtains being pushed back on either side and the glare of sunlight streaming through the single window in his room. Someone moved across the sunlight, momentarily casting a shadow across his face, and he squinted against the returning brightness, raising a hand to shade his eyes.

  “Who’s there?” he whispered, through a parched throat.

  “Master Stevanus and a new nurse,” a voice said from the other side of the bed, as the caster of the shadow bent to put down a tray on a bedside table. “You’d best draw that drape a bit, my lady,” the battle surgeon’s voice went on. “He won’t be quite up to bright light for a day or two.”

  Rhys Michael turned his head heavily from side to side, trying to follow what was going on. He thought he felt better this morning, though he was very weak. As he squinted toward the sunlight, trying to discern the identity of the lady Stevanus had addressed, she retreated to adjust the drape. With the bright sunlight blocked, his sun-dazzled eyes could just make out a slim, elegant back in a blue damask gown. But as she turned to come back and his sight adjusted, his face lit with surprise and pleasure.

  “Mika?”

  Smiling, she came to take his hand and press it to her lips, then held it clasped in both her hands. Her tawny hair was plaited in a fat bronze braid that hung over one shoulder and fell nearly to her waist, and the blue eyes were filled with tears above the soft, rosy lips.

  “They wouldn’t let me see you until this morning,” she whispered. “Rhysem, I was so worried!”

  “So was I,” he managed to reply.

  Stevanus cleared his throat at that, and Michaela raised her head.

  “I don’t wish to intrude upon this obviously happy reunion,” the surgeon said with an indulgent smile, “but I would ask that we at least mingle your priorities with what I am charged to do. How are you feeling this morning, your Highness?”

  “Weak,” he admitted, gazing back fondly at Michaela, “but much better than I did a few minutes ago.”

  “Yes, I can see that,” Stevanus murmured, setting a hand to the prince’s free wrist, then shaking his head. “Well, there’s no point to checking your pulse with a lovely young lady in the room, I suppose. How’s the head?” he went on, shifting to slip his hands under Rhys Michael’s neck and probe gently where he had been hit at the base of the skull.

  Rhys Michael tensed and winced as Stevanus made his examination, not relaxing until the battle surgeon had removed his hands.

  “I suppose it feels about the same,” he murmured. “I must have quite a bruise.”

  “You do,” Stevanus agreed. “The leg was bruised worse, though. You lost a fair amount of blood, too. You can have a look a little later, after you get some food in you. Meanwhile, if you promise not to let yourself get overexcited, the young lady may stay to help you eat. Do you think you can sit up?”

  With a little help from Stevanus and Michaela and half a dozen pillows, he managed to end up sitting partially upright. He felt dizzy, but that might have been as much from Michaela’s presence as from his throbbing head, as she settled on the edge of the bed and fed him hot broth and morsels of bread and cheese. They spoke little, for he was too weak to chew and talk at the same time, but their eyes conveyed what lips could not. It was chilly in the room and starting to cloud over outside, but her very presence warmed him—though perhaps the cup of hot mulled ale she gave him to finish the meal also contributed to his sense of drowsy well-being.

  Stevanus made her leave after that, so that he and a squire could bathe the prince and change the dressing on his leg. Lord Manfred came in while they were at it, greeting the prince and then watching silently. The one glimpse Rhys Michael got of his leg, as they turned him this way and that to wash him, was enough to make him a little queasy—sutured neatly enough with perhaps a dozen bristling black silk stitches, but surrounded by yellow-purple flesh that Stevanus assured him was only bruising, not massive infection. Before they had finished, Rhys Michael had drifted off again.

  After he was asleep, Manfred drew the battle surgeon into an outer room.

  “You’re sure that isn’t festering?” he asked in a low voice.

  Stevanus only smiled and shook his head as he dried his hands on a rough linen towel. “His ‘rescuers’ knew what they were doing, my lord. One can be fairly precise about the placement of bruises when one’s ‘patient’ is unconscious. And his ‘wound’ came from a surgeon’s knife, not a sword. The sutures are for show.”

  A sly smile of understanding slowly crossed Manfred’s face.

  “I see,” he murmured. “Then the head injury?”

  “Oh, he got whacked in the head, all right. It wouldn’t have done to have him take too close a notice of the details of his rescue. A calculated risk, but again, his rescuers knew what they were doing. They also bled him right after they took him—that slight wound on his neck, where I told him yesterday he’d nearly met his Maker. The blood loss will help to keep him weak for a few days, and I’m helping the headache along with medication—which also keeps him a little drowsy. But unless he should start to question the situation, which is highly unlikely, I believe we can discontinue everything except plenty of good food and his nurse’s company within the next few days, with him none the wiser.”

  Manfred gave a low, pleased chuckle. “Then I gather that none of this presents any impediment to encouraging nature to take its course where the young lady is concerned.”

  “On the contrary, my lord, it presents an ideal opportunity for the two of them to spend long hours together with one of them already in bed and naked,” the battle surgeon replied archly. “In fact, I’ll be very surprised if you can keep them apart until the banns are read.”

  “Why, Master Stevanus, I thought you Custodes chaps paid no notice to such things,” Manfred said, grinning.

  Stevanus shrugged and smiled. “I wasn’t always under vows, my lord, and I found my vocation late in life.”

  “Well, then, that explains it. Thank you, Master Stevanus,” Manfred said. “I shall be watching developments with great interest.”

  Back in Rhemuth, in the days that followed, Javan’s anxiety continued to increase. His Council had made it clear that no possible relaxation could be made of the Ramos Statutes, pressed Javan to increase the efforts already being expended to hunt for his brother’s abductors, yet would not permit him to go to Grecotha to see for himself how the search was progressing, lest his interference increase the risks to the captive prince—and also endanger his own safety.

  Jason’s body came back to Rhemuth for burial after the first week, along with word that Lord Ainslie was sufficiently recovered to take over direction of the search from his sickbed, but neither his nor Albertus’ troops could uncover any clues. Rhun even informed the Council that he had sent Sitric north under heavy escort to join Albertus’ patrols, in hopes that a Deryni might be able to help discover Deryni abductors.

  All that this apparently accomplished, other than to increase royal frustration, was to annoy the abductors. Another letter arrived after about a week, this time accompanied by the prince’s signet ring and what appeared to be a little toe—and a statement that the senders had no wish to maim the prince by cutting off a finger, but would do so next time, if the king did not begin complying with their demands.

  Receipt of the toe sent Javan into anguished panic. He knew that the abductors were not who they claimed to be, but could not reveal that he knew so. Nor had he any real idea who they actually were—though his imagination supplied ever more unpleasant possibilities as the days wore on. Whoever they were, they wer
e torturing his brother, and Javan could neither find them to stop them nor accede to their demands.

  His Deryni allies tried to ease a little of the tension by throwing the uncertainty into public light. Within a few days of the arrival of the second demand letter, the real Ansel MacRorie sent a statement disavowing any connection with whomever had sent the demands and reiterating his continued loyalty to the House of Haldane, even from exile. He also assured the king that though he had been nowhere near Grecotha at the time of the prince’s abduction, he had his men working there now, looking for the real abductors of the prince.

  Hubert naturally dismissed this as specious, declaring that of course Ansel would claim that, after the fact, when he realized that his threats were not going to get him what he wanted. That made as much sense as any other explanation, at least to the rest of the Council, but it pleased Javan not at all. Hostility toward the Deryni Ansel increased dramatically after the receipt of his letter, and several members of the Council even suggested that the Ramos Statutes should be tightened even more and dragnets put out to find the impudent Ansel and finish him, once and for all.

  More days passed, and Javan became increasingly convinced that Paulin and Hubert knew more than they were letting on. Both men assured him of their concern and a desire to help, and he never caught either of them in an outright lie, but both sometimes went to great lengths to avoid answering precisely the question he had asked.

  They were hiding something, but he dared not accuse them. He knew it was too risky to try to press Paulin for information he was determined not to give, especially when the extent of the Vicar General’s relationship with the mysterious Dimitri was unknown. He might be protected. Archbishop Hubert, though hardly without risk, was a much more likely prospect. Javan had meddled before, where Hubert was concerned. The trick was to get Hubert alone and in a frame of mind such that he would suspect nothing.