Camber of Culdi

by Katherine Kurtz

  Who was Bethane? Who was Darrell, her husband? What happened to him? What happened to her, to make her the way she was? She wasn’t always an old hag, living in the hills and eking out a miserable existence from sheep and the offerings of the locals for concocting the odd love potion or practicing folk medicine. She’d obviously had some contact with Deryni, but was she Deryni herself, though ill-trained, or was she something else, like Warin de Grey?

  So I melded the two ideas—Alaric’s tumble from the tree and the mysterious old woman in the hills, twenty years younger than when we saw her in Deryni Checkmate, though already an eccentric old hag—and turned the characters loose. I found out more than I’d bargained for about Bethane, her husband and his associations, and another Deryni I hadn’t expected to see in this context; and got yet another glimpse of those dark times of anti-Deryni persecution that had only just begun to ebb to a livable level by the time Alaric Morgan reached young manhood.

  BETHANE

  Old Bethane shaded her eyes with a gnarled hand and peered out across the meadow with a frown. She had seen the approaching children before. Two of them were sons of the Duke of Cassan; she didn’t know about the other two. This time, the four were racing their shaggy mountain ponies across her meadow at a mad gallop, beginning to scatter the scraggly sheep she had spent all morning collecting.

  A low growl rose in her throat as she saw one of the boys lean down and whoop at a grazing ewe and her lamb. The ewe bolted in terror and lumbered out of the pony’s way, the lamb scampering after, and Bethane lurched to her feet, brandishing her shepherd’s crook at the girl child, who was almost upon her.

  “Here, now! You stop that!”

  The girl’s pony stopped stock still, but the girl continued on over the animal’s head, legs all akimbo and skirts flying, to land in the grass with a thump as the pony whirled and retreated, bucking and squealing. Bethane grabbed the child’s upper arm and hauled her to her feet, giving her a none-too-gentle shake.

  “Got you now!” Bethane crowed. “What’s the matter with you, riding through here like you owned the free air and frightening an honest woman’s sheep? Well, speak up, girl! What do you have to say for yourself?” As the girl raised wide blue eyes in astonishment, more stunned than hurt, the three boys came galloping toward her. The oldest looked to be twelve or so, though he carried himself like a soldier already. The other two were several years younger, one of them pale blond like the little girl.

  “You let my sister alone!” the blond boy shouted, yanking his pony to a halt and glaring at Bethane quite fiercely.

  “You’d better not hurt her!” the older boy chimed in. “She didn’t mean any harm.”

  Bethane laughed, almost a cackle, and shook her head. “Not so fast, young masters. I’m owed an apology first.” She glared at her captive. “What’s your name, girl? What’s the idea of chasing my sheep?”

  The girl, perhaps five or six, swallowed visibly, not even glancing at her brother and the other two boys, though the hand of the eldest rested on the hilt of his dagger.

  “I’m sorry, grand-dame,” the girl said in a small voice. “We didn’t know the sheep belonged to anyone. I mean, we knew they weren’t Duke Jared’s, but we didn’t think they’d been herded. We thought they were just grazing free.”

  Bethane did not allow her expression to soften, but she did relax just a little inside. Perhaps the children had not come to torment her, after all.

  “Oh, you did, did you?” she muttered. “Who are you, anyway?”

  The eldest boy drew himself up a little haughtily in the saddle and gazed down at her from his advantage of height. “I am Kevin, Earl of Kierney.” He nodded toward the other brown-haired boy. “This is my brother, Lord Duncan, and that’s Lord Alaric Morgan, Bronwyn’s brother. You’d better let her go,” he added, a trifle less belligerently.

  “Oh, I’d better, eh? Well, I’ll tell you one thing, young Earl of Kierney. You’d better learn some manners, if you expect anyone to respect you for more than that high-sounding title you bear. What’s your excuse for chasing my poor little ewes?”

  As the young earl’s mouth gaped she could tell he was not often spoken to in that manner—his brother moved his pony a little closer and swept off his leather hunt cap in a polite bow.

  “Please pardon us, grand-dame. We are all to blame. It was thoughtless on our part. How can we make amends?”

  Slowly Bethane released the little girl’s arm, studying her and the three boys a little suspiciously. What was there about these children that raised her hackles so? Something fey, something she had not sensed in a long time …

  But, no matter. Hitching up her greyed and tattered skirts, she leaned against her shepherd’s crook and continued to eye them sternly, determined not to speak until all four had backed down from her gaze. She did not have long to wait.

  “Very well. Apology accepted. And to balance accounts, you can help gather up my sheep now, since you helped scatter them.”

  The blond boy nodded, no trace of resentment in his look. “A fair recompense, grand-dame. We’ll see to it at once.”

  For the next little while, the children applied themselves diligently to the task at hand, eventually rounding up all the sheep they had scattered and even a few Bethane had missed. When they had finished, they spread their noon meal under a large tree across the meadow and settled down to eat. The little girl invited Bethane to join them, but the old woman shook her head wordlessly and retreated to her cave, overlooking the meadow. She wanted no such exalted company. Besides, the oldest boy, Kevin, obviously did not like her much. Only the little girl seemed genuinely concerned about an old widow woman’s feelings, even bringing up a napkin full of fresh-baked bread and savory cheese when she and her companions were finished eating. She laid it on a smooth rock and made a graceful little curtsey before heading back down the hill without a word.

  Bethane could hardly ignore such a gesture. Besides, she could smell the food. She found the bread soft and pale, so kind to old, jagged teeth and aching gums—bread such as she had not tasted since her youth, when she and Darrell first were wed. And the cheese—how he would have loved that!

  With sweet memory for companion, she settled on a sunny ledge just outside the cave to enjoy the last morsels, basking in the summer warmth. The faint murmur of the children still playing in the meadow, the coolish breeze, and the glow of a full stomach soon lulled her to drowsiness, and the old eyes closed. With her wedding ring cradled close beside her cheek, she drifted. She could almost imagine she was young again, her Darrell lying at her side.

  He had been a handsome man, perhaps the more so for being of the magical Deryni race, though she had been afraid of him at first. He had risked his life to save her from a life she still chose to forget. The love which had grown between them became a beacon for her soul, a positive focus for the knowledge which before had threatened to destroy her.

  He had taught her things, too—a magic beyond the ancient lore of midwifery and conjuring and divination handed down to her by her mother and mother’s mother. Though many of their methods had been similar, his powers had come from an elsewhere that she had never tapped; and she, in turn, had taught him how to bid the elemental forces—more homespun magic than the exalted theory and ceremony of the mysterious and much-feared Deryni, but it had worked as well, if in different ways. Together, they had dreamed of shaping a better world, where differences would not give others leave to kill. Perhaps their children would not need to live in fear, as they had done.

  But there were to be no children; none that lived, at any rate. Too soon had come a renewed wave of madness in their village, condoned and even encouraged by the local lord. Darrell, unknown to be Deryni by most of their acquaintances, had been a teacher of mathematics in nearby Grecotha. With several of his Deryni colleagues, he also had been tutoring young children of his race in secret, though it was a capital offense against the law of Ramos if they were caught. They had been betrayed. Agents of the l
ocal lord, all armored and ahorse, had raided the small farmhouse where the Deryni schola met and slain the teacher schooling them that day. More than twenty children were captured and driven like sheep into a brush-filled pen in the village square, for the lord’s man and the village priest meant to burn them as the heretics they surely were.

  She remembered the smell of the oil-soaked wood in the pen, as she and Darrell huddled in the crowd which gathered to see sentence carried out. She saw again the looks of dull terror on the faces of the children, most of them no older than the girl Bronwyn and her brother now playing across the meadow. Her stomach churned in revulsion as it had so many years ago, as a line of guards bearing torches marched out of a courtyard behind the square and took up stations around the captive children. The guard captain and the village priest followed, the captain bearing a scroll with pendant seals and cords. The crowd murmured like a wild animal aroused, but the cry was not of horror but anticipation. In all their number, there was no one to plead the cause of these terrified little ones.

  “Darrell, we have to do something!” she whispered in her husband’s ear. “We can’t just let them burn. What if our child were among them?”

  She was just seventeen, carrying their first child. Her husband’s voice was tinged with despair as he shook his head.

  “We are two. We can do nothing. They say the priest betrayed us. Even the confessional is not sacred where Deryni are concerned, it seems.”

  She bowed her head against his shoulder and covered one ear with a hand, trying to blot out the pious mouthings of priest and captain as holy words were spoken and writs of condemnation read. All pretense of legality and justice was but excuse for murder. The child she carried beneath her heart kicked, hard, and she cradled her arms across her abdomen as she began to sob, clinging to Darrell’s arm.

  Hoofbeats intruded then, and a disturbance behind them. She looked up to see a band of armed men forcing their horses through the crowd, more of them blocking the exits from the square—stern-looking horse-archers with little recurve bows, each with an arrow nocked to bowstring and more in quivers on their backs. At their head rode a fair-haired young man in emerald green, surely no older than herself. His eyes were like a forest in sunlight as he swept the crowd and urged his white stallion closer to the captain.

  “It’s Barrett! The young fool!” Darrell whispered, almost to himself. “Oh, my God, Barrett, don’t do it!”

  Barrett? she thought to herself. Is the man Deryni? “Let the children go, Tarleton,” the man named Barrett said. “Your master will not take kindly to children being slain in his name. Let them go.”

  Tarleton gazed back at him agog, his writ all but forgotten in one slack hand. “You have no authority here, Lord Barrett. These are my lord’s vassals—Deryni brats! The land will be well rid of them.”

  “I said, let them go,” Barrett repeated. “They can harm no one. How can these infants be heretics?”

  “All Deryni are heretics!” the priest shouted. “How dare you interfere with the work of the Holy Mother Church?”

  “Enough, priest,” Tarleton muttered. At his hand signal, the men holding the torches moved closer to the pen where the children huddled in terror, fire poised nearer the oil-soaked brush.

  “I warn you, Barrett, do not interfere,” Tarleton continued. “The law says that those who defy the law of Ramos must die. Whether it happens to these now or later makes no difference to me, but if they die now, you doom them to die without blessing, their Deryni souls unshriven. You cannot stop their deaths. You can only make it worse for them.”

  No one moved for several seconds, the two men measuring one another across the short distance which separated them. Bethane could feel her husband’s tension knotting and unknotting the muscles of his arm, and knew with a dull certainty which ached and grew that Barrett was not going to back down. The young lord glanced behind him at his men stationed all around, then dropped the reins on his horse’s neck.

  “I never have liked the law of Ramos,” he said in a clear voice, casually raising both hands to head-level, as though in supplication.

  Instantly he was surrounded by a vivid emerald fire which was visible even in the sunlit square. The gasp of reaction swept through the crowd like a winter wind, chill and fearsome. Tarleton reddened, and the village priest shrank back behind him, crossing himself furtively.

  “By my own powers, which are everything those children have not realized, you shall not have those lives,” Barrett stated. “This I swear. I can stop you with my powers, if I must, and save at least a few, but many others are likely to die who do not deserve such fate.”

  The crowd was beginning to look around uneasily for an escape, but Barrett’s men had closed the perimeter even more tightly, guarding all exits from the square. There was no place to go.

  “I give you this choice, however,” Barrett continued, raising his voice above the rising murmur of dismay. “Release the children, allow my men to take them away to safety, and I will give myself into your hands as their ransom. Which will please your lord more? A handful of untrained children, who can do no harm to anyone? Or someone like myself, fully trained and able to wreak havoc any time I choose?—though I would not do so willingly, despite what I know you are thinking.”

  In the rising panic around them, no one heard Darrell’s choked, “No!” except Bethane. Tarleton let the crowd seethe and mutter for several seconds, then held up a hand for silence. He was obviously unnerved by Barrett’s implication that he was reading minds, but he put up a brave front, nonetheless. Gradually the crowd noises died down.

  “So, the aristocratic Lord Barrett de Laney is a Deryni heretic himself,” the captain said. “My lord was right not to trust you.”

  “Your lord must wrestle with his own conscience in the dark, early morning hours and answer for his own actions at the day of reckoning,” Barrett replied.

  “A prize, indeed,” Tarleton continued, as though he had not heard. “But, how do I know that you would keep your part of the bargain? What good is the word of a Deryni?”

  “What good is any man’s word?” Barrett returned. “Mine has been my bond for as long as anyone has known me. I give you my word that if you allow my men to take these children out of here, I will surrender myself into your hands and I will not use my powers to resist you. My word on that. My life for the lives of those children. I am able to face my God on those terms.”

  “You must be mad!” Tarleton replied, a menacing grin beginning to crease his face. “But I accept your terms. Guards, allow His Lordship’s men to take the children. Archers, train your arrows on my Lord Barrett and see that he keeps his Deryni word. I have never heard that magic could stop a flight of arrows.” A half-dozen archers stepped from their vantage points on the roof to either side of Tarleton and covered the new hostage. The other guards murmured among themselves, but they obeyed, moving away from the pen to surround Barrett, though they would not approach too closely with the green fire of his magic still flaring close about him. Methodically, Barrett’s men rode in one at a time and took the children up in front of them, one to each man, until the pen was empty and the last double-mounted horse had disappeared at a gallop down the main street. Four men remained, arrows still nocked to their little recurve bows. One of them saluted Barrett smartly.

  “Sir, your orders will be carried out.”

  Barrett gave a quiet nod. “I thank you for your service and release you from all other orders. Go now.”

  The four bowed over their saddlebows, then wheeled as one and galloped off the way the others had gone. When the clatter of steel-shod hooves had died away, Barrett swung down from his horse and began walking slowly toward Tarleton. The crowd parted before him, even Tarleton and the priest backing off a few steps. When he had approached to within a few feet of them, he stopped and bowed his head. The fire died around him, and with his left hand he drew his sword hilt-first and extended it to Tarleton.

  “I keep my word, Captain,”
he said, eyes blazing at the other man.

  Tarleton gingerly took the weapon and moved back a pace, and instantly half a dozen of his men were moving in to grasp Bennett’s arms and bind him.

  “His eyes!” the priest hissed. “Evil! Evil! Beware his eyes, my lord!”

  As the crowd took up the cry, Tarleton gestured curtly to his men and turned to lead them back into the yard. Barrett held his head high, but he stumbled as the guards manhandled him away from the crowd. Old Bethane shook her head in her quasi-dream, resisting the continued memory; but it continued to play itself out before her closed eyes, and she could not seem to open them and stop it.

  In the yard beyond the square lay a blacksmith’s shop, and just outside the shop, clearly visible from where she and Darrell watched in horror, a brazier held various implements of red-hot iron. To this place the guards of Tarleton led their captive, one of them pausing to pluck a glowing bar of iron carefully from the fire. Then the captive was hidden behind the ring of soldiers which closed in for his torture.

  She did not see them blind him, though she knew that it was done. His scream echoed through the square, making her stomach cramp and the child move in her womb. Even as she was squeezing her eyes shut and trying to stop her ears against ever more agonized screams, Darrell was leaning close and pulling a hand away, speaking in a stern, urgent voice.

  “I gave no word! I’m going after him. If I can get him out, I’ll take him to Saint Luke’s. Meet me there. God keep you, dearest.”

  And then, before she could hold him, he was gone, slipping through the crowd and vaulting onto Barrett’s horse, the golden fire of his glorious shields blazing up around him as he and the snow-white stallion surged through the crowd and into the yard beyond.

  Magic flared, shouts and screams choked off in mid-breath, and the crowd began to panic, pushing away through every exit from the square in mindless stampede. Bethane felt herself carried on their tide whether she willed or no, away from the yard, away from Darrell, and she wept, she raged.