The Legends of Camber of Culdi Trilogy

by Katherine Kurtz

  “Ecce Agnus Dei: ecce qui tollis peccata mundi.”

  “Domini, non sum dignus,” the others responded softly, in unison. Lord, I am not worthy that Thou shouldst come under my roof. Speak but the word and my soul shall be healed.

  Cinhil bowed his head and swallowed, closed his eyes, letting the timeless and well-loved words float over and around him. Even on the lips of a Deryni, especially on the lips of a Deryni like Alister Cullen, the words had meaning, substance, reassurance which could sustain him through whatever might befall.

  He opened his eyes to see Cullen passing the chalice to Joram, who bowed and then sipped from it. Then, leaving the chalice with Joram, Cullen turned to take another vessel from the altar and begin moving among the men, distributing Communion. Joram followed close behind and allowed each man to drink from the chalice he held, wiping the rim after each use with a linen cloth.

  So the rumors were true. Cinhil had heard that the Michaelines sometimes gave Communion under both species, both bread and wine, but he had thought that confined to use within the Order only. Here, there were those who were neither Michaeline nor even clergy—Camber and Rhys and Guaire and the other laymen—and they were participating in the same manner as the Michaeline brethren.

  But enough of this. He must leave before he was discovered. If nothing more was amiss than irregular communion practices, then he was quite unjustified in what had now become simple eavesdropping.

  He had glanced aside to be certain that no guard had approached while he watched, when he was suddenly aware of a shadow falling across his viewing slit. His head snapped back in alarm, but it was too late. Cullen’s tall form blocked the light, and he could feel the vicar general’s eyes boring through the now-thin-seeming fabric of the pavilion wall, freezing him in his place like a trapped bird.

  “You would have been welcome to join us openly, Sire,” the voice said in a not-unkindly tone. “There was no reason to crouch in the cold and dark. All brethren in Christ are welcome at His table.”

  He could not seem to move. As Joram, too, stepped into view at Cullen’s left, Cinhil was aware of hands untying the lashings of the flap through which he had peered, and then of Jebediah and Jasper Miller withdrawing the flap, disclosing him there for all to see.

  He could feel his cheeks burning with shame beneath his beard, knew that he had been caught red-handed. What must they think? What would they do to him?

  He was not given time to brood on it. Hands firm but gentle pulled him to his feet and ushered him into the pavilion, there to lead him into their midst and bid him kneel.

  He knelt, mortified, head bowed and eyes closed in a futile attempt at escape. He could hear Cullen and Joram continuing their rounds among the others, their low-voiced Latin phrases and the responses of the communicants, but he dared not look up. He was huddled in the presence of God, intruder on a rite he had not initially been invited to share. He felt guilty, devious, as if he had been caught in the midst of some unclean act. His heart caught in his throat as he realized that someone—it had to be Cullen—had stopped in front of him.

  “Ego te absolvo, Cinhil,” the voice whispered. He felt a light touch on his bowed head. “Be welcome at the Lord’s table,” Cullen continued in a more normal tone. “Will you share this Eucharistic Feast with us on the morn of battle?”

  Cinhil opened his eyes, but he could not bear to raise his eyes higher than Cullen’s knees.

  “D-Domine, non sum dignus,” he managed to stammer.

  “‘Thou art a priest forever,’” Cullen replied in a whisper.

  Cinhil felt a wrench of conscience at that, but when he looked up, fearfully, Cullen’s sea-ice eyes were warm and reassuring, the way they had been the night before, in Cinhil’s pavilion.

  Cullen removed a fragment of Host from the vessel in his hand and held it out to Cinhil.

  “Corpus Domini nostri Jesu Christi custodiat animam tuam in vitam aeternam,” Cullen murmured, placing it in Cinhil’s trembling hand.

  Cinhil nodded, unable to make the appropriate response, and raised it to his mouth. It was a piece of ordinary bread, not the formal, unleavened stuff customarily used, but it was the most extraordinary thing he had ever tasted. He swallowed, overcome with emotion, as Joram paused before him with the cup.

  “Sanguinis Domini nostri Jesu Christi custodiat animam tuam in vitam aeternam,” Joram said softly.

  As he put the cup to Cinhil’s lips, Cinhil dared to look up at him, but there was no trace of anger or resentment on Joram’s face. Cinhil drank, and the sip of wine sent his spirit soaring. He bowed his head and lost himself in mindless contemplation for the next several minutes.

  It was not until the others were rising around him, most of them to bow slightly to him before leaving the pavilion, that he came back to full awareness of his surroundings and his circumstances.

  Cullen and Joram were putting away the last of the altar things, starting to remove their vestments. Camber was leaning on a large trunk to Cinhil’s left, Rhys standing quietly beside him. All four of them were studying him, though he could not seem to catch any of them staring.

  He met their eyes uncertainly as he got to his feet.

  “I heard voices as I passed outside,” he said, by way of guilty explanation. “I couldn’t sleep. I didn’t realize that folk would be about their business so early.”

  “The priests will be saying Mass for the men very shortly,” Camber said neutrally. “It is common custom for the commanders to hear Mass earlier, lest they get caught up in battle preparations and omit that sacrament.”

  “I—didn’t know,” Cinhil stammered.

  “You didn’t ask,” Camber replied. “Had we realized you might wish to hear Mass with us, you would have been invited. However, we were led by your actions to expect that you preferred your own chaplain to perform that office for you.”

  “So he would have, had I not been led to discover you,” Cinhil said. “I didn’t mean to pry, but—”

  “But His Grace was mightily curious,” Cullen said, turning to regard the king with an appraising glance as he folded his chasuble. “And when he discovered a Michaeline Mass in progress, a Deryni Mass, he feared the worst.”

  He laid the chasuble away in its trunk and began removing the rest of his vestments. “Was the King’s Grace surprised, or disappointed?”

  “Disappointed?” Cinhil looked at the half-clad priest incredulously. “Why, to receive the Eucharist thus again—it was, it was—my God, Alister, I would have thought you, at least, would have understood!”

  Cullen had stripped down to his undergarments, and now began drawing on the leathers and chain mail of war.

  “Pious words, Cinhil. But you half expected something more, didn’t you? Did you distrust us so much, even in the faith we share, that you would expect some profanation of this greatest magic? Did you, perhaps, even hope for it, as an excuse to make some real break with our Deryni race, to somehow soothe your wretched conscience?”

  “Alister, no!” Rhys whispered.

  “What?” Cinhil appeared dazed.

  “Well, did you?” Cullen insisted.

  “How dare you!” Cinhil blurted out. “You—all of you—you are responsible for my state!”

  “You are responsible for your own state!” Joram interjected. “You make pious noises, but your actions say otherwise. No one forced you to do what you did.”

  “No one forced me? How could I refuse? I was an innocent priest, knowing only the monastic life for nearly all my forty-three years. You and Rhys wrenched me from my abbey against my will, tore me from the life I loved, and thrust me among men even more ruthless than yourselves!”

  “Were you ever abused?” Cullen replied. “Did anyone ever ill use you, once you were safe in sanctuary?”

  “Not physically,” Cinhil whispered. “You did not have to. You were the vicar general of one of the most powerful and well-respected religious orders in the known world. Camber was—and is—Camber. What more can I s
ay of him? And then, there was the Healer.” He gestured toward Rhys. “And my brother priest Joram, who commanded me to ‘feed my sheep,’ and Archbishop Anscom, the Primate of All Gwynedd. And even your shy, innocent daughter, Camber—ah, how she betrayed me! And all of you were telling me that it was my bounden duty to leave my state of grace, my sacred calling, and take a crown I did not want!”

  “You listened,” Camber said quietly.

  “Yes, I listened. What else was I to do? Had I dared to defy you, you would either have killed me or wrenched my mind to make me do your will. I could not stand against all of you. I was only one frail human man.”

  “And have there been no martyrs before?” Cullen observed coldly. “That, too, was a choice open to you, had you dared to take it. If your beliefs were as fervent as you now say, why did you not continue to refuse us, come what might? We were not easy on you, Cinhil, but you cannot wholly lay the blame on us. With a stronger vessel, we could not have succeeded.”

  “Well, perhaps you have not succeeded yet!” Cinhil shouted.

  With a sob of indignation, he lurched from the pavilion at a dead run, clutching his cloak around him like a madman.

  “Open warfare,” Camber murmured, when Cinhil’s pounding footfalls had faded from hearing.

  “He’ll come to his senses,” Cullen said. “He must, or I have truly set us all to ruin. I’m sorry. I suppose it was the final eruption of all my own frustration.”

  Joram bowed his head, toying with a stole he still held in his hands. “I’m partially to blame. I lost my temper. I goaded him. Father, I’m sorry you had to be associated with this. It will only make things more difficult for you.”

  He looked up at his father in sorrow, but Camber merely shrugged and smiled.

  “He has a few hours to cool off. Perhaps he needed to hear that. It was truth—as was his side.”

  “Truth.” Cullen sighed and buckled his sword over the blue Michaeline surcoat he now wore.

  “Truth. In a few hours, I expect we shall all know real truth.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith.

  —II Timothy 4:7

  There was no time to ponder further consequences in the hour which followed. Final orders must be given, scouting reports digested, horses fed and groomed and saddled, weapons inspected and tested one final time before the coming battle.

  Camber, with a subdued Joram at his side, repaired to his Culdi levies to confer with his captains. Cullen gave his Michaeline knights as tough an inspection as they had ever stood, tight-lipped and taciturn as his second-in-command led him along the battle lines.

  To Rhys had fallen the task of organizing a hospital corps, of making optimum use of the dozen Healers and perhaps twice that many human surgeons they had been able to recruit for the war effort. The surgeons and their assistants would have their hands full by the end of the day, for the Healers’ ministrations must be confined to those in mortal need, while the surgeons took care of lesser injuries. Those who could be helped by neither would see the priests, for the cure of their souls, if nothing else.

  But even Rhys’s planning would make little difference to the majority. Battle shock, added to actual injuries, would claim more lives than could be saved, even had they three times the number of Healers. They dared not risk such valuable men in actual battle, with the result that the wounded must lie where they fell until the battle was over.

  As for Cinhil, there was little that could be done. The king retreated to his pavilion precipitously after leaving Cullen and the others, and was not seen again until time for him to mount the great horse Frostling and ascend the ridge. Jebediah escorted the king, having been warned by Joram of the verbal altercation with Cullen, and he did his best to remain as unobtrusive as possible while still performing his duties. Orders were given quietly, preferably after asking Cinhil’s formal permission. Cinhil responded in as few words as possible, civil but much subdued, with the taut precision of anger held rigidly in check.

  Where the men were concerned, Cinhil played his part well. Though no one dared to cross him, they read his silence as quiet confidence. But within the protection of steel and leather, Cinhil was anything but calm. He clenched his teeth and willed his hands steady on the charger’s reins, grateful for the shelter of his crowned helm. His innards tied in knots as he gazed down at the battle array forming on the field beneath him, and his throat constricted at the sight of the enemy assembling far across the plain. A cadre of knights surrounded him as bodyguard, mixed Deryni and human, but they afforded little comfort since he did not know most of them.

  And farther along the ridge, Camber and his son also watched the forming enemy lines. Though a gray mist still hugged the plain, smudging the distances with dampness, they could see the banners and the shadows of hundreds of men, mounted and afoot, and the flash of diffused sunlight on readied weapons.

  Camber glanced at Joram, then back at the pale, empty plain spread before them, suspecting that his son was thinking much the same thing he was.

  “You’re wondering whether it’s all worth it, aren’t you?” he said, an ironic smile twitching at his lips.

  Joram’s eyes narrowed, but he did not shift his gaze from the plain below. “He was a pompous idiot this morning,” he said bitterly. “All we’ve worked for, all we’ve tried to make him understand—nothing. Is there no one he trusts?”

  “Apparently not, at least for the moment. My hopes were as high as yours for Alister to gain his confidence—higher, perhaps, knowing my own total inadequacy in this area. I never thought that Alister would light into him like that—or you.”

  Joram snorted and glanced down at his saddlebow. “You, yourself, admitted it was the truth.”

  “Aye, it was. But the more I think about it, the less certain I am that he was ready for it. I must confess, I thought Alister’s patience was a little longer than that, too.”

  “It was,” Joram murmured. “I hadn’t had a chance to tell you about it, but he tried again, last night, to let Cinhil know that he wanted to help. He was soundly rebuffed. It took Jebediah and me nearly an hour, after he got back, to convince Alister that his gesture had not been in vain, that it was Cinhil’s problem and not his. Even then, I think he had the feeling that he was getting close, that Cinhil had almost accepted the offer of friendship. I confess, I was not so patient. I had to walk out of the pavilion last night, when Cinhil continued to raise objections about the watch-wards. I was afraid I’d say something I’d later regret, if I stayed any longer. I suppose I should have left this morning, too.”

  “Then why did Alister—”

  “This morning? I suppose it was just the final blow, on top of all the normal tension of battle preparations, to find Cinhil spying on us. Behind his gruff exterior is a sensitive, vulnerable man.”

  Camber sighed. “I didn’t know about last night. Do you think the breach can be mended?”

  “That’s hard to say. Alister Cullen is proud, as you know well, but he also cares a great deal about Cinhil, in his own way. It’s a curious affection which has grown up over the past year or so. I think—I hope—that Cinhil senses that. God knows, he’s going to have to learn to trust someone, if he’s to survive.”

  “Then God grant that this is only a temporary setback,” Camber replied. “Cinhil is frightened, and he’s stubborn. I don’t think he realized that he was dealing with another man almost as stubborn as himself.”

  Joram chuckled, despite the gravity of the situation. “Aye, that’s true. Alister is one of the more stubborn men I’ve ever encountered—almost as stubborn as you, at times.”

  Camber laughed. “No one could be that stubborn. Not even your infamous vicar general. Speaking of which, here he comes, looking as grim as the Apocalypse. What ho, Alister?” he called.

  Cullen spurred his chestnut up the remaining slope and drew rein. His blue surcoat was already spattered with mud, but he wore a surprisingly che
erful expression.

  “Well, it’s only a matter of half an hour or so now. So far as we can tell, her troop deployment is just as you said it would be—not a sign of treachery. One of our scouting parties had a minor skirmish with one of her patrols just at sunup, but neither side lost any men. If I didn’t know that there was no such thing, I’d say this has all the shape of a classic battle encounter.”

  Camber smiled grimly. “I didn’t think she could know how much I’d found out. And there really wasn’t time for her to change her plans too drastically and still proceed with the invasion now.”

  “Just blind luck,” Cullen muttered. “And that’s what it’s going to be, all day. She still has us outnumbered.”

  “How is Cinhil?” Joram asked, abruptly changing the subject.

  Cullen sighed. “Avoiding me, whenever possible. Still, I don’t think it’s permanent. Certainly, he’s brooding about this morning. His feelings were hurt. But he’s in control. I think things will smooth out, once this is over.”

  Camber clapped a mailed gauntlet to Cullen’s shoulder and nodded. “That is welcome news, at least. As for the battle, is there anything special we should keep in mind?”

  A battle horn sounded farther over on the ridge, where the king sat his horse between Jebediah and Bayvel Cameron, surrounded by his knightly bodyguard. Cullen gathered up his reins and smiled.

  “Just keep your shield up and your head down,” he said, guiding his horse around them to head toward his own men, farther to the left. “Good battle, my friends. God grant we meet again, at day’s end!”

  With that, he was off, cantering easily toward the Michaeline cavalry assembled on the northernmost portion of the ridge. Below them in the plain, the infantry of Gwynedd was drawn up in orderly companies, beginning to move out in the gray mist at a smart pace. Cullen’s Michaelines streamed down the hill and started heading farther north, to attempt a pincer movement.

  Camber sighed and glanced south, at the smaller army of Earl Sighere, whose Eastmarch levies had caught up with them late the day before, then surveyed his own Culdi knights waiting patiently behind him for his signal. He and Joram would lead the Culdi levies today, each of them taking a command of cavalry and half the foot. Young Guaire had also brought a small force from his demesne at Arliss, but he had elected to place his men under Camber’s command as well, that he might carry Camber’s personal standard into battle at his side.