In the King's Service

by Katherine Kurtz

  Deftly the steersman brought the galley close to the quay, where he turned the craft into the wind and the crew scrambled aloft to furl the sable sail. At the same time, men waiting ashore threw lines across to those on deck, so that the vessel could be warped alongside the quay.

  The king came aboard at once, not waiting for a gangplank to be set in place, leaving young Ahern to stand with Sé and the other royal officers. Alyce accepted the king’s condolences in silence, then moved to the rail and, as soon as the ship was made secure, went ashore and into the arms of her brother.

  “I am so glad to see you!” Ahern whispered, as they clung to one another. “I think I sensed that she was gone. The night it must have happened, she was in my dream. Actually, I dreamed about both of you. But when the messenger arrived, a few days later, I know what the news was that he brought.”

  She drew back a little and sadly shook her head—but without tears, for she had spent herself of tears days before.

  “You cannot imagine how awful it was,” she said quietly. “And it might have been far worse. As it was, two more died with our sister—three, if you count Muriella. Poor, stupid cow!” She drew a breath. “How is Sé bearing up?”

  Ahern shook his head. “Not well. He was in love with her. They hoped to be married, if the king agreed. And I think it might have been allowed, if—”

  He broke off, biting at his lip, and Alyce hugged him closer. After a few minutes, Sé and four of the archers from his honor guard came aboard to bring the coffin off the ship, Jovett joining them, bearing it on their shoulders as they fell into place in the funeral cortege that would take Marie to Coroth Cathedral. There she would lie in state through the following day, so that Coroth’s citizens might pay their respects.

  Though the ship’s escort joined that of the king, marching solemnly in the foot procession that now started toward the cathedral to a muffled drumbeat, Alyce accompanied the king and her brother in the vast, boxy carriage that had brought them down from the castle. Alyce sat next to Ahern, hand clasped tightly to his; Donal was seated opposite. The leather side-curtains were rolled up and secured, so that the occupants could be seen, but the crowd gathered along the Via Maris was there for the coffin, not the carriage that followed it, quiet and respectful, men doffing their caps and women dropping little curtsies as the cortege passed, a few crossing themselves. Zoë rode behind with the maid who had accompanied them, in a pony cart led by her father.

  They rattled along in taut silence for several minutes, the thud of the drums somewhat blurred by the clangor of iron-bound carriage wheels on cobbles, until the king finally said, “I would have given your sister to Sir Sé, you know.” He gave an apologetic shrug at their looks of surprise. “Yes, he’d made it clear that they were fond of one another. And after word came of her death, he came to me and confessed everything. And yes, I know what he is,” he added, as both of them became suddenly guarded. “I’d guessed, before, but he confirmed it.”

  He glanced out the window briefly, then returned his attention to the two of them.

  “If I’d been what the bishops would have me be, as a king, that could have been an end to him, of course—but I’m not. Some would even condemn the fact that the three of us are sitting here, having this conversation. Some would say that I or my ancestors should have routed out the seed of Corwyn years ago, root and stock, that I should have given the duchy to a human line.

  “But we Haldanes have always sensed the usefulness of having a Deryni House in Corwyn, as a buffer with Torenth. It isn’t something I’d expect the bishops to understand—they certainly don’t approve—but they don’t rule Gwynedd; I do. And it’s been my choice, and that of my predecessors, to keep a Deryni line on the ducal throne in Corwyn—and to shelter certain other Deryni at my court. I very much regret that my sheltering of your sister was not sufficient to keep her safe. But human jealousy is something that can’t easily be predicted.”

  “What—will happen to Sé, Sire?” Alyce asked pleating together folds of her skirt.

  Donal cocked his head at her. “Do you fancy him?”

  She looked up sharply. “You mean—to marry him?” she asked in a small voice.

  “I told you I would have given him your sister. I shall do the same for you, if you wish it.”

  She swallowed with difficulty, then gave a small shake of her head.

  “Then, is there someone else you fancy?”

  “No, Sire. But Sé is like another brother to me. I could not marry him—unless, of course, you desired it.”

  “Dear Alyce.” The king glanced at her brother. “Your sister knows her duty, Ahern. But this is not, perhaps, the time to speak of marriages. One day soon, I shall ask both of you to marry as I direct. But I think we first must bury your dear sister.”

  Very shortly, the carriage rattled to a halt before the cathedral’s great west portal. When a footman had opened the carriage door and set steps in place before it, the occupants alighted, the king holding back briefly to admire the six black horses hitched to the carriage, while brother and sister followed their sister’s coffin up the cathedral steps.

  It was Father Paschal who met them just inside, Coroth’s bishop having found excuse to be away from the capital for the week, rather than preside at the funeral obsequies of a Deryni. But the cathedral chapter had not scrupled to receive the body of this latest daughter of Corwyn. They waited now, lined up across the top step, before the great doors, each bearing a thick funeral taper of fine beeswax in his two hands. When Paschal had censed and aspersed the coffin at the great west door, the monks led it inside, softly chanting an introit borrowed from the priest’s Eastern heritage, intoned over a continuous “ison” or drone:

  “Chori angelorum te suscipiat . . . In paradisum deducant te angeli . . . Memento mei, Domini, cum veneris in regnum tuum. . . .”

  “May choirs of angels receive thee . . . May the angels accompany thee to paradise . . . Remember me, O Lord, when You come into Your kingdom. . . .”

  The haunting orison drifted on the stillness as Marie de Corwyn was borne down a center aisle strewn with the flower petals that should have led her to her marriage bed. Young girls crowned with flowers accompanied the white-draped coffin to its resting place before the altar, each carrying a single red rose.

  The catafalque waiting to receive her was likewise strewn with flower petals, and the girls sweetly laid their flowers atop the coffin when it had been set in place. After that, all those in the funeral party knelt for prayers led by Father Paschal.

  THEY laid Marie de Corwyn to rest two days later, in the crypt of the cathedral where her ancestors had worshipped and married and where many of them had been buried. Her tomb would lie between those of two other Corwyn women who had predeceased her: their mother, Stevana de Corwyn, and her mother, the incomparable Grania.

  Afterward, as mourners filed back up the steps to the nave, preparing to disperse, Alyce saw Sé hanging back from the others, and felt the brush of his mind as he gazed at her, willing her to look in his direction.

  Disengaging from the company of her brother and the king, she went back to her sister’s sarcophagus and knelt beside it, ostensibly to pray. Sé lingered until all the others had gone, then came to kneel beside her, laying one hand on the alabaster lid of the sarcophagus. There had been little opportunity for private conversation until now.

  “I wish I had known that the king looked kindly on the prospect of our marriage . . . ,” he said softly.

  Alyce gently shook her head. “That would not have saved her,” she whispered.

  “Probably not.” Sliding his forearm onto the lid, Sé bent to touch his lips to the cool stone, then straightened again, not looking at her.

  “Did she suffer?” he asked.

  Alyce started to shake her head in automatic denial, then drew a resolute breath. Lying to another Deryni was fruitless, even if intended to give comfort.

  “The poison . . . would have affected her breathing,” she murmur
ed truthfully. “Little Isan and Brigetta as well. I—don’t know what they might have suffered.”

  “Dear God . . . ,” he whispered, his eyes bright with tears as he lowered his forehead onto his arm.

  “Sé, what will you do?” she asked, after a few seconds.

  He raised his head, wiping across his eyes with the back of his hand, not really seeing her.

  “I’m not yet certain,” he said dully. “I had begun to plan for a future that no longer exists. Now that she is gone . . .”

  He shook his head, swallowing hard.

  “Alyce, I may leave Gwynedd,” he went on. “I don’t know that I care to live anymore where our people are so despised.”

  “But—it was jealousy that killed her, not our blood,” Alyce protested.

  “Is that really true?” he asked. “I’m not certain. If Marie hadn’t been Deryni, do you think Muriella would have dared to do what she did? Hatred was certainly a factor.”

  “Perhaps. She certainly wasn’t fond of me or Marie.” After a short pause, she said, “Are you aware that the king offered to give you my hand, in place of Marie’s?”

  He nodded bleakly. “I sensed that he might. But I don’t think that’s what either of us wants, is it, dearest sister?”

  As he slid his hand over hers, she shrugged and smiled faintly. “Probably not—though he’s said that he intends both me and Ahern to marry soon. Nor can I quarrel with his reasoning. Ahern must marry and produce an heir, and I—” She shook her head in resignation.

  “Until the future Duke of Corwyn has produced his heir, I am a valuable inducement for the loyalty of some ambitious courtier. I wonder that he even offered me the choice to marry you. But if I cannot marry for love—and I wish there were someone I pined for—at least let my marriage serve the interests of the king.”

  Sé smiled bitterly. “You have been bred too well to your duty, Alyce. Fortunate the man who wins your hand.”

  She gave him a wan reflection of his own smile, then looked away again.

  “Sé, what will you do?”

  “Well, I do intend to go away for a while.” He turned his gaze back to Marie’s sarcophagus. “I thought to seek counsel of my father, back at Jenadûr.”

  “But—what about Ahern? He needs you.”

  “Only in a general sense,” Sé replied. “He’ll have Jovett—and there are at least a dozen other good men, both here and in Lendour, who are eager to help him become the man he is meant to be. I think that his handling of this business up in Kiltuin may well have turned the tide in his favor, to win him his knighthood despite his knee.

  “As for needs—I, too, have needs, Alyce.” As does our race, he added, in a tight-focused burst of mindspeech.

  Both intrigued and caught off balance by this abrupt change of direction, she laid her hand over his and invited a melding of their minds, but he shook his head.

  “I mayn’t speak of it yet,” he murmured.

  She nodded, then turned her gaze back to her sister’s tomb.

  “This touches on your threat to leave Gwynedd,” she said quietly. “If you did leave, where would you go?”

  “That has yet to be determined,” he allowed. “I have taken counsel of Father Paschal, who suggests that a few years’ training at Djellarda would be useful; there is an inner curriculum. I might even investigate the knights at Incus Domini.”

  “The Anvilers?” Alyce looked up with a start.

  “Well, some believe they may have been inheritors of at least a little of the old knowledge, from the days before the Restoration,” Sé admitted. “Some of the Knights of Saint Michael ended up there, you know. And maybe even some Healers. Of course, that was generations ago.”

  The very prospect was intriguing. Alyce, too, had stumbled across vague references to such connections, and could readily understand how the allure of possible rediscovery might appeal to the finely honed mind of Sé Trelawney. But to pursue that quest would, indeed, take him far away.

  “I shall never see you again, shall I?” she whispered.

  “It isn’t my intention to stay away forever,” he said gently, lifting her hand to press it briefly to his lips. “On the other hand, I honestly cannot say what God might have planned for me. After you have left, I shall, indeed, go to my father for a few weeks at Jenadûr—Ahern knows this. In the spring, I may ride east.

  “But I shall write when I can; and I promise you that, come what may, you shall see me at Ahern’s side, when he is called to his knighthood, whenever that may be. Beyond that . . . I just don’t know.”

  Chapter 21

  “Whose hatred is covered by deceit, his wickedness shall be shewed before the whole congregation.”

  —PROVERBS 26:26

  ANOTHER week the king’s party remained in Coroth. By mid-October, with Nimur of Torenth having offered a token payment of reparation to Kiltuin town—solely as a gesture of goodwill toward its inhabitants, though he swore that his kin had had no part in what had happened there—Donal of Gwynedd was able to withdraw his troops and return to Rhemuth, leaving Ahern and his council of state in Corwyn to oversee a return to normal relations along that portion of the Torenth border.

  Alyce and Zoë returned as well, though they found the rhythm of life at court much changed. Marie’s absence was keenly felt in the royal household—and Isan’s as well, for his mother rarely smiled in those next months. Prince Brion and the other boys missed their playmate for a while, but Duke Richard’s return had ensured that the normal cycle of study and practice at arms resumed. By early November, the castle’s squires, pages, and would-be pages had begun to practice for their service at Twelfth Night court, which would soon be upon them.

  For the king, it was a time to assess both the events of the summer and the likely events of the coming year, for the chill winds of autumn whispered increasingly of the growing disquiet in Meara. The intelligence Richard had gathered during his summer progress north of Meara only confirmed it; and Jared Earl of Kierney, who had traveled back to Rhemuth with the duke the month before, was able to offer further insights and speculations.

  The Mearan prince born three summers before was reported to be thriving, and rumors suggested that his mother, the Princess Onora, might be once again with child. Iolo Melandry, the royal governor in Ratharkin, declared himself convinced that serious rebellion was brewing, and Jessamy’s brother Morian had uncovered several serious instances of sedition.

  The warning signs could not be ignored. Late in November, once the snows had rendered any serious military threat unlikely, the king began quietly summoning certain of his key vassals and commanders from the north and west to attend him in Rhemuth, soliciting their recommendations, beginning to hammer out plans for a probable campaign in the spring.

  Among those summoned to the king’s counsels was Ahern de Corwyn, fresh from his successes of the previous summer. After but a few days of watching him interact with the other commanders, Donal of Gwynedd began sounding out his brother about the possible reactions to knighting Ahern at the upcoming Twelfth Night court.

  “So, what do you think?” the king asked, after reeling off his reasons. “Are there apt to be objections?”

  “None that will be voiced,” Richard replied. “Other than from churchmen, perhaps, because of what he is. In any other candidate, the knee would have put him out of the running—it is a handicap, when he’s afoot. But you’ll find few better in the council chamber, as we’ve seen this week; and I’ve sparred with him often enough to know that he swings a mean sword. Even with his bum knee, put him on a horse and he can ride circles around me—and even around you, when you were in your prime.”

  Donal chuckled, well aware that he was quite past that prime, but gratified that there were others willing and able to deal with the more physically demanding aspects of rulership—and not really minding that that part of his life was now behind him.

  “I’ll take that as a compliment to him, rather than a snide comment by a younger brother on
my advancing age,” Donal said. “But you’re right—all that bashing and thrashing is for younger men. Fortunately, young Ahern is well qualified for both—and for the more subtle disciplines of the council table and strategy board. If that business at Kiltuin had to happen, I’m glad it happened the way it did, because it gave me an opportunity to watch him at work. In time, he could even be the equal of Damian Cathcart, or Jeppe Lascelles at Killingford.”

  “Christ, I remember meeting General Jeppe when he was a very old man,” Richard murmured. “If you’re comparing Ahern to him, we’ve a real treat to look forward to, by the time he reaches his prime. I’d definitely go ahead and knight him, Donal—and I’d also confirm him in his Lendour title.”

  “Really? The bishops wouldn’t like that,” Donal reminded him.

  “Of course they wouldn’t like it. He’s Deryni, and they’re bishops, and by the letter of the law, no Deryni may come into the full authority of high rank until he reaches the age of twenty-five. Not fourteen, and not even eighteen, but twenty-five. Those are stupid laws, Donal, and you should change them.”

  “I’ve thought about it,” Donal conceded. “And one day, I might just do it. But in the meantime, I do have to keep at least a reasonable peace with my bishops. Did I tell you that the Bishop of Corwyn wouldn’t even celebrate the Requiem for Ahern’s sister? The family chaplain did it.

  “Fortunately, the bishops aren’t going to excommunicate me or him for confirming him to an earl’s coronet before he turns eighteen. We’re only talking about a few months, after all; and given his past services to my crown, there’s no question but that he’s prepared to put his life and his talents on the line again, in my service.”

  “It’s the talents that the bishops don’t like,” Richard pointed out. “And they’d happily take his life.”

  “Well, not until I’ve had his service in Meara again,” Donal declared. “And meanwhile, come Twelfth Night court, I intend to knight him and confirm him as Earl of Lendour. We’ll save the ducal recognition until they’ve gotten used to a Deryni earl.”