In the King's Service

by Katherine Kurtz

  Grief urged her to look further for her sister, but reason reminded her of other duties to the living. Lady Megory had lost a son, and the young princes had lost a comrade. She returned to the queen’s solar to find Richeldis and her ladies helping the bereaved mother wash and prepare her son’s body for burial.

  Comforted by Zoë and Vera, Alyce wept with them and watched as they tenderly laid young Isan Fitzmartin in the queen’s own bed, where the ladies would keep watch beside him during the night. A little while later, now accompanied by Zoë and Vera, she withdrew again to find the body of her dead sister.

  THEY found both Marie and Brigetta now lying in the chapel royal, where the sisters from Saint Hilary’s-Within-the-Walls had lovingly prepared the two for burial, laying them out upon a bier strewn with rose petals. Each had been dressed in her finest gown, crowned with a floral wreath and veiled from head to toe with fine white linen, like brides arrayed for their bridegrooms. Alyce was reminded of the veil Cerys Devane had worn for her novice profession at Arc-en-Ciel; but Marie had never sought such a life.

  A lock of Marie’s bronzy hair had tumbled loose from under her veil and down the side of the bier, and Alyce gave a sob as she saw it and came to touch it with a trembling hand. At the sound, one of the sisters spreading fresh linens on the altar turned a sympathetic face toward the newcomers. She was hardly older than they, and looked to have been weeping. But before she could speak, her older companion inclined her head toward Alyce.

  “A terrible sadness,” she said quietly. “But they are with God now.”

  Gently Alyce reached out to lay one trembling hand on the bulge of Marie’s folded hands beneath the veil covering her, her vision blurred by tears.

  “Dear God, I had thought I had no tears left to weep,” she whispered, crumpling to her knees to rest her forehead against the edge of the bier.

  After a moment, blinking back tears of her own, Vera sank down beside her, one arm around the shoulders of her twin, and Zoë knelt on Alyce’s other side.

  “Could you please leave us for a moment?” Zoë said softly to the two sisters.

  In unison, the pair inclined their heads and padded silently from the chapel, settling to wait outside until the visitors should finish paying their respects.

  NOT far from the entrance to that chapel, Seisyll Arilan watched for a long moment, then turned to make his way toward the stables.

  The day’s events, of a certainty, required a report to the Camberian Council, not only to share his impressions regarding young Krispin MacAthan—which easily could have waited until the next regularly scheduled meeting—but now to report the untimely and quite senseless death of Marie de Corwyn. The death of a Deryni heiress of her importance would require the Council to considerably reshuffle their careful strategies regarding desirable marriage alliances. But before he went to tell them, he intended to have a look at the body of the accused poisoner.

  Because the wretched Muriella had taken her own life, she lay not in the chapel royal or even in one of the side chapels of Saint Hilary’s-Within-the-Walls but in the castle’s stables, in one of the loose boxes usually reserved for foaling, laid out on boards across a pair of trestles. Two of the queen’s maids had washed away the blood and dressed her in a clean white shift, wrapping her shattered head in linen bandages, so that she looked like a nun.

  Now one of the maids was sewing the dead girl into her burial shroud while the other tucked bunches of sweet herbs amid the folds of fabric. A wreath of rosemary lay beside the basket of herbs. Both of the maids looked up guiltily as Seisyll appeared at the stall door, and they dropped him nervous curtsies.

  “Is that the girl who fell to her death? Muriella, I believe?” Seisyll asked, jutting his chin toward the corpse.

  The girl sewing up the shroud gave him a fearful nod.

  “Aye, m’lord—poor lady. She’ll get nae better wedding wreath,” she added, nodding toward the circlet of rosemary. “But she didna’ mean to do it.”

  “She didn’t mean to do it,” Seisyll repeated, raising a quizzical eyebrow. “What—she didn’t mean to kill herself, or she didn’t mean to kill all those people?”

  His rapid-fire questions silenced the speaker, but the other girl boldly lifted her chin to him.

  “She didna’ mean to kill anyone, m’lord! ’Specially not the boy.” The other girl was now nodding emphatic agreement. “But she was fair green wi’ jealousy!”

  “Jealousy of whom?” Seisyll demanded.

  “Why, the Lady Marie,” came the prompt reply. “Everybody knew that—’cept Marie an’ her sister, o’ course. Marie was fair smitten wi’ Sir Sé Trelawney, an’ too besotted to notice that Muriella fancied him, too.”

  “Indeed?” Seisyll murmured. “So she did mean to kill her rival, at least. And when that went all wrong, she killed herself?”

  Both girls nodded wordlessly, wide-eyed.

  “Poor, stupid, cowardly child,” Seisyll muttered under his breath.

  “Will she—burn in hell, m’lord?” one of the girls asked tremulously.

  “Probably,” Seisyll retorted, then softened at the look of horror on the two faces. “But perhaps not, if we say prayers for her soul.” He reached over the door to the loose box and lifted the latch. “Why don’t we say a prayer for her now?” he said, coming inside to slip between the two, a hand on each shoulder pressing them both to their knees.

  At the same time, he extended his powers and took control of both of them, kneeling between them then to reach deeper memories from each. If anyone came upon them, it would appear to be only what he had claimed: the three of them kneeling in prayer for the deceased—and that was all the girls would remember.

  A superficial dip into both young minds gained him little information beyond what they had already told him. And even the more rigorous process of taking a death-reading from the unfortunate Muriella failed to reveal much more.

  The poisoned marchpane had indeed been intended for Marie alone—or possibly her sister as well, for Muriella had liked Deryni no better than she liked any rival for the affections of Sir Sé Trelawney. But she certainly had never thought that anyone else would sample the marchpane: not young Isan or the other maid of honor, and certainly not Krispin or Prince Brion. Seisyll shuddered at the thought of how close the crown prince had come to death—spared by the simple happenstance that he did not care for the sweet confection.

  Nor had Ahern de Corwyn had any part in the plan, though he supposedly had sent the marchpane. Muriella had invoked his name in order to allay any suspicion on the part of Marie, never thinking beyond the initial stages of her plan—for surely, even if the Delacorte girl had lived, and held her tongue, it still would have emerged that Ahern knew nothing of marchpane. And it had been blind fear of the hangman’s rope that had impelled Muriella to throw herself from the castle wall, when she knew herself discovered and her oh-so-clever plan gone horribly wrong.

  “Stupid, stupid little girl!” Seisyll whispered under his breath, as he came out of trance, having set his instructions in the minds of the two maids.

  Leaving them on their knees to pray a while longer, he rose and gazed down at Muriella for a long moment, gently shaking his head, then wearily picked up the wreath of rosemary from atop the basket and put it on her bandaged head.

  Though the church taught that suicide was a mortal sin, Seisyll had never been able to accept that teaching as an absolute. Muriella had been frightened and desperate enough to take her own life rather than face up to the consequences of her actions—which had certainly been horrendous—but he thought that if she burned in hell, it would not be because she had loved and then had feared. And even the murder of three innocents besides herself could be forgiven, in time, if the murderer truly repented.

  But that was for Muriella to sort out with her God. For himself, Seisyll could only breathe a final prayer for her soul, with an appeal to the Blessed Mother to take this foolish child into her loving care and eventually restore her to grac
e.

  Pityingly, he brushed his fingertips across the dead girl’s cheek in farewell, then bent to press a holy kiss to her brow before turning to go.

  Chapter 20

  “May choirs of angels receive thee . . .”

  —INTROIT FOR THE FUNERAL LITURGY

  THE following week would pass in a numb blur of grief for Alyce de Corwyn, for she now must bury her sister, as she had buried her father but two years before. As she had done after her father’s death, she traveled back to her ancestral lands—not to Cynfyn, for Marie had been little a part of that, but to Coroth, the Corwyn capital, where this latest scion of the line of Corwyn’s dukes would lie with her ancestors.

  In this season of the year, still languishing in the heat of the summer just ending, the cortege wound its way southward only as far as Desse, following the royal road that ran along the east bank of the River Eirian. Thence the party transferred to the relative comfort of one of the king’s galleys for the voyage into the great Southern Sea and thence around the horn of Mooryn, heading eastward then until at last they sighted the twin lighthouses guarding Coroth Harbor.

  The news, of course, had reached Corwyn’s capital well in advance of the funeral party, sent by fast courier the very day of the tragedy. The king had been out hawking on the moors the day it arrived, with Lord Hambert, the Seneschal of Coroth, and the Tralian ambassador, attended by Sir Jiri Redfearn, Sir Kenneth Morgan, and Sir Sé Trelawney, along with a handful of knights. It was a bright day in early October, and the expedition was to have been the last such junket before Donal’s planned departure for Rhemuth in a few days’ time. Ahern had begged off, declaring himself possessed of a mild indisposition.

  Donal had braced himself for bad news when he saw the look on the messenger’s face, as the rider in Haldane livery reined in his lathered horse and sprang to the ground. The man himself had known little of the tragedy beyond the stark fact that several had died in Rhemuth as a result of poison hidden in a parcel of sweetmeats, but Seisyll Arilan’s terse missive held a fuller story.

  The poison appears to have been meant for the Lady Marie, Seisyll had written, in a letter folded around another, smaller square of folded parchment, but she shared the treat with Lady Brigetta Delacorte and some of the children—none of the princes, for which, God be praised, but young Isan Fitzmartin is dead. Ostensibly, the sweets came from Lord Ahern, in the diplomatic pouch from Corwyn, along with the enclosed letter from Sir Sé Trelawney.

  Donal’s eyes darted to the folded square he had removed from inside Seisyll’s letter, then skimmed on down the page.

  Young Krispin MacAthan tasted one of the sweetmeats but did not like it, and spat it out, Seisyll declared. He came to no harm. Not so, young Isan, who ate the rest of Krispin’s share, in addition to his own. He perished, along with Lady Marie and Lady Brigetta. The poisoner, Lady Muriella, threw herself from one of the parapets when she saw what she had done.

  The king’s relief that Krispin had survived was tempered by regret at the names of the dead—the sad waste of it. And but for the grace of God, any of his true-born sons might have perished as well.

  Very sadly, it now fell to him to inform young Ahern de Corwyn of the death of his twin sister. Donal could not, for the life of him, remember what the Lady Brigetta Delacorte looked like, or even the jealous and spiteful Muriella, but Marie de Corwyn, besides being a valuable heiress, had been a delight to eye and ear, a notable adornment to the court of Gwynedd. Furthermore, the loss of her marriage as coinage of political expediency was greatly to be regretted. Sadly, no one would ever know what might have become of young Isan—an engaging and promising boy, now gone as if he had never lived.

  “Ill news, Sire?” Sir Kenneth asked quietly.

  Slowly Donal nodded, not speaking as he opened the second folded piece of parchment, addressed on the outside to the Lady Marie de Corwyn. He recognized the handwriting, for Sir Sé Trelawney had been serving as secretary for much of the recent correspondence with the court of Torenth. The content of the letter had largely to do with the minutiae of life at the Corwyn court—nothing at all improper or intimate—but he could guess how it would have thrilled the fair Marie to receive it.

  “Sir Sé,” he called, lifting his gaze and the hand with the letter toward that young man, tending the hawks a little ways away.

  Sé gave the hawks into the care of a nearby squire and came at once, curiosity in his eyes.

  “Sire?”

  “Yours, I think,” the king replied, handing him the letter. “May I take it that you know nothing about a parcel of marchpane sent to the Lady Marie in the last diplomatic pouch to Rhemuth, ostensibly from her brother?”

  Sé shook his head distractedly, his face blanching as he glanced at the letter and recognized his own handwriting.

  “Sire, on my honor—nothing untoward—”

  “I do not question your honor,” the king said quietly, briefly lowering his eyes. “And I know you are innocent of anything besides the letter you wrote.” Reluctantly he then handed Sé the letter from Seisyll Arilan. “I’m very sorry, son.”

  Only a faint breeze stirred, there on the moorland—that and the soft whuffling of the horses nearby, and the screech of a hawk—as Sé read what Arilan had written, his embarrassment turning abruptly to stunned disbelief.

  “No!” The word escaped his lips before he could stop it, his breath catching in his throat as he raced through a second reading of the letter in hope of finding some reprieve that he had missed. Tears were welling in the blue eyes as he then looked up at the king, every line of his body begging for it not to be true.

  “It can’t be. It isn’t possible.”

  Sadly Donal shook his head. “I cannot think Lord Seisyll would make up such a thing, lad. I was aware of your affection for Marie—though obviously, neither of us was aware that the Lady Muriella had fixed her heart on you.” He sadly shook his head. “And how badly wrong it went. Not only did she eliminate her rival, but two more innocents as well—and then took her own life.”

  Sé screwed his eyes tightly closed, battling for control. “Had I been there,” he whispered, “and known her to do this deed, I would have taken her life. Dear God, I was mustering my courage to ask you for Marie’s hand—little though I am worthy of her. We had hoped we might be married!”

  “Sé, Sé—dear boy,” Donal murmured. Having lost his first wife and many a friend, over the years—and nearly having lost Krispin—he had an inkling what Sé must be feeling.

  “We’d best go back to Castle Coroth,” he said aside to Sir Kenneth. “Young Ahern must be told, and I’ve no stomach for any more hunting today.”

  WITH almost military precision, Sir Kenneth called in the others of their party and organized the return to Coroth. They found Ahern de Corwyn up on the castle’s highest parapet, leaning on his stick and gazing out to sea toward the west, where any approaching ship from Rhemuth would first appear. Gaining this vantage point could not have been easy, for stairs were still a major challenge for Ahern’s stiff knee. But when the king saw Ahern’s face, he knew that the messenger must have given him at least the gist of the message he carried, before heading out to the moors to find the king.

  “Ahern?” the king said quietly.

  The young man turned his face toward the voice, his profile still and drawn against the lowering twilight.

  “I heard,” he replied. “My sister Marie is dead.”

  The starkness of his tone had a finality about it that sent a chill up Donal’s spine.

  “It’s because she was Deryni,” Ahern went on, in an even softer voice. “Oh, I know Muriella was jealous. Both Marie and Alyce had mentioned her in letters, over the past year or so. She fancied Sé, I gather. But I can’t imagine that she would have acted, if she’d thought she was only competing with another ordinary woman. And Marie was not ordinary.”

  “No, she wasn’t,” the king replied.

  Ahern heaved a heavy sigh and turned his face back to the se
a. “I’d like to be alone now, if you don’t mind. I expect it will be a few days before the ship arrives with her body.”

  “Ahern, I—”

  “You needn’t worry that I’ll do myself harm,” the young man said firmly. “Please, Sire. Go.”

  TWO days later, just at dusk, a royal galley under bellied sable sails glided into Coroth Harbor between the twin lighthouses known as Gog and Magog, each with a signal beacon already lit for the night. Amidships, beneath a striped canopy of gold and Haldane scarlet, Alyce de Corwyn stood with a protective hand atop her sister’s white-draped coffin, gowned in unrelieved black and with a black veil wrapped closely about her head, covering her bright hair. Zoë Morgan and Sir Jovett Chandos flanked her, and the ship’s crew stood to attention along the rails to either side, interspersed with the men of the royal honor guard sent along from Rhemuth at the command of the queen, black crepe tied to each man’s sword-arm, bared heads bowed in respect.

  The long-drawn question of a lookout’s horn floated across the light chop with the clang of the harbor-buoys as the galley skirted between the two sea jetties of tumbled granite blocks, answered by a deeper horn-blast from the shore. The sounds had always welcomed Alyce home in the past; now they cried out the sadness that accompanied the ship like a cloak.

  Her brother and the king were waiting on the quay with Sé Trewlawney and a contingent of Corwyn archers drawn up as an honor escort, each holding a torch aloft. Ahern’s council and all the knights who had come with the king’s party stood among them, solemn and silent, as were the townspeople gathered behind them, for Corwyn’s people had come to admire and respect their future duke and his sisters.