The Harrowing of Gwynedd

by Katherine Kurtz

  “And I say to you,” Revan said, suddenly throwing off his mantle and striding into the water, “that the Lord now offers you the means to break from your old life and be what you would be—His dearly beloved child of earth, untainted by what you were before. He has given cleansing into my hands, and commands me to share it with any who earnestly repent. Yea, even those who have only been corrupted by contact with the evil ones may be purified, if they earnestly seek God’s mercy. Do you seek it, Brother Gillebert?”

  More consternation rippled through the throng, but Revan merely held out his hand to the Deryni who had spoken, inviting him to come forward. And because this entire opening scenario had been so tightly orchestrated, Gillebert did, slowly and haltingly, as he had been instructed to do—though he remembered it not—his eyes locked yearningly with Revan’s.

  “Aye, come, Brother Gillebert,” Revan said softly, retreating farther into the pool, though with his hand still uplifted in summons. “Take off your shoes, for you enter holy water. Patrick and Joachim, help him, for the love of God. Come, Gillebert, and take my hand, that I may lead you to purification. All ye people, pray with me as our Brother Gillebert takes his salvation in his hands and lets God wash away his iniquity.”

  Gillebert was ankle deep in the water now, the awed Patrick, who was also Deryni, standing behind him with the discarded shoes clasped to his breast. Tears streaming down his cheeks, Gillebert strode farther into the water, knee deep, hip deep, seeming not to mind the cold as his hand clasped Revan’s.

  “Blessed be God, Who has brought you to this place,” Revan said, leading him deeper, “and blessed shall you be, for trusting in His infinite mercy and love.”

  The water was lapping just above their waists as he stopped and turned back to face the hushed multitudes, positioning his unwitting Deryni accomplice immediately in front of him, facing his right.

  “I shall immerse you fully,” he said in a voice that only Gillebert could hear, clasping the man behind the neck and at the forehead, forearms braced against back and chest. “Grab onto my wrist, and keep your legs and back straight. I’ll do the rest. Now, take a deep breath and hold it,” he added, as he pressed the man backward.

  “Be cleansed by the Holy Spirit!” he cried, tilting the man backward under the water and triggering the reactions set by Sylvan before. “May this act of faith wash away your impurities, that you may emerge to new life!”

  The crowd gasped as Revan brought him to the surface and steadied him onto his feet again, water streaming from the man’s hair and beard. Gillebert looked more startled than frightened, blinking and faintly disoriented as he wiped the water from his eyes.

  “In mystery He comes to His children and makes them clean,” Revan said, beginning to guide his subject back into shallower water. “In mystery He speaks, and His children hear.”

  In that instant, Gillebert gave a stifled little squeak and pressed both hands to the sides of his head, his eyes huge with awe and amazement mixed.

  “It’s gone!” he gasped. “My power is gone! It used to be like a little voice, constantly telling me things I did not wish to know, but it’s gone! I’m clean!”

  Near pandemonium broke out at that, several of the Willimites charging into the water, Deryni among them, to see for themselves. For a few minutes, as several Deryni checked Gillebert, hardly anyone noticed that Revan had dropped to his knees in the shallower water a few feet away, head bowed and hands clasped at chest level. Those who did notice assumed he was giving thanks; in fact, he was praying that no one would see through their deception.

  In any case, he was ignored for several minutes while Gillebert’s benefactors helped him from the water and surged around him, becoming increasingly excited as he explained and reexplained—or tried to—what he thought he had experienced. After a few minutes, several others, Sylvan cautiously among them, helped the dripping Revan back to shore, where they had spread his mantle on the warm sand. Revan came along compliantly, but did not really seem to see or hear them, the while murmuring prayers of praise to God for the favor granted.

  After a few more minutes, those flocked around the still-astonished Gillebert suddenly turned and converged on Revan. Sylvan knew a moment of panic in that instant, for many of those who had sprung to Gillebert’s support were not among those whom Tavis and himself had pre-conditioned to go along with the fantasy they were weaving. But it soon became apparent that they sought Revan’s further ministrations and not his life.

  “Cleanse us, Master!” they begged him, falling to their knees all around him on the warm, clean sand. “Free us from the curse of the Deryni. Make us new in the sight of the Lord!”

  And Revan rose and reentered the water.

  Thus it was that the Regent Manfred and his party came upon him later in the morning, baptizing in the chill, quiet pool in the bend of the Eirian River. His brother had warned him he might find the Willimites here, and Manfred knew vaguely who they were. But as he drew rein on a low bluff overlooking the pool, it occurred to Manfred that these people did not look at all the way he had always heard Willimites described. Down in a pool formed by a bend in the river, a bearded young man in a soggy white robe appeared to be dunking people under the water, and two long lines of people seemed to be waiting to be dunked.

  “You there!” Manfred called, stabbing his whip at an amply padded individual near the edge of the crowd—a prosperous merchant, by the cut and quality of his gown—or former quality, for the bright brocade had never been meant to be immersed in water. “What the devil’s going on here?”

  “No devil, sire,” the man said genially. “That’s the Master Revan. He preaches a new baptism to free us from the Deryni.”

  “A new baptism?” said a chunky Custodes priest riding in Manfred’s party.

  “Well, not a baptism in the same sense as Holy Mother Church teaches, Father,” the man tried to explain. “Master Revan says it’s a cleansing, a—a purification. It removes the taint of having had contact with Deryni, and it even cleanses Deryni themselves! That man over there, Gillebert, is one of our Willimite brethren. I’ve known him for years. And he used to be a Deryni, but—”

  “What do you mean, he used to be Deryni?” the priest broke in with a snort. “Either one is or one isn’t. If that man was Deryni this morning, he’s Deryni now—and I can prove it!”

  “He isn’t,” the merchant said stubbornly, suddenly anxious for Revan, down in the river, as well as the closer Gillebert.

  “Easy enough to solve this dispute,” Manfred said, signalling with his whip for mounted soldiers to go and cut Gillebert from the rest of the crowd. “Stand back, you people,” he called, for those making way for the soldiers began to rumble resentfully as they realized they were being infiltrated by armed men. “Fellow, you won’t be harmed if you’re not Deryni, as these folk claim. Are you the one they call Gillebert?”

  One of the soldiers had Gillebert by the back of his tunic by now, and was marching the protesting man back toward Manfred.

  “Come on, man. Speak up. Are you Gillebert?”

  “Aye, sire, I am,” he murmured, landing with a whuff as the soldier brought him before Manfred and released him with a shove, sending him sprawling to hands and knees.

  “Gillebert What?” the priest said, swinging down from his horse and taking a long, narrow tube out of his cincture. “And is it true that you claim not to be Deryni anymore? Guards, someone get down and hold this man.”

  The mutterings of the small crowd gathering around them began to take on a touch of menace as two soldiers dismounted and seized the bewildered Gillebert, one of them cuffing him sharply on the side of the head while the other grabbed onto a handful of hair and twisted it.

  “Answer the Father’s question, sirrah!”

  “I—my name is Gillebert—just Gillebert. Ow! Gillebert of Droghera!”

  His eyes fastened fearfully on the tube the priest was tipping back and forth, and he squirmed a little as the man unscrewed the tube
in the middle to reveal two slender needles fitted in the top half, each as long as a finger joint, and set just far enough apart that they did not touch. Something wet glistened on the steel slivers, a droplet trembling at the end.

  “Gillebert of Droghera, eh?” the priest said, moving closer. “Aren’t you a little far from home?”

  “I—I came to join the Willimites,” Gillebert babbled, grimacing as one of the soldiers wrenched his head back and to the side and the other pulled open the neck of his shirt. “Wh-what are you going to do?”

  The priest smiled grimly and brought his needles closer. “If you aren’t Deryni, you needn’t fear. This shouldn’t hurt much,” he added, as he jabbed the needles into his victim’s neck, just at the join of shoulder and collarbone, and Gillebert gasped.

  “You have just tasted the sting of a cunning new device which we call a Deryni pricker,” the priest went on. “Very shortly, we will know for certain whether you are or are not Deryni.” Gillebert bit back a sob as the priest jerked out his needles and a little rivulet of blood ran down his neck. “There was merasha on the needles—which, if you are Deryni, you already know will begin to affect you very shortly in quite interesting ways.”

  Nodding, Gillebert slumped in his captors’ arms, his voice low and despairing. “I know what merasha does, priest. And I was Deryni. But my powers are gone! Master Revan has washed me clean of that taint, I swear it! He is touched by the Spirit. He brings hope to those who have walked in darkness.”

  Whether or not Revan was, indeed, touched by the Spirit, it soon became clear that Gillebert of Droghera was no longer touched by merasha. The drug had its expected sedative effect, subduing the unfortunate Gillebert into a drowsy, compliant state, but he showed none of the other symptoms of disorientation, incoherence, or nausea univerally suffered by those of his race.

  “But, can we be sure he actually was Deryni?” the priest asked, as the soldiers released a staggering but totally coherent Gillebert to his fellows. “And who is this latter day John the Baptist who calls himself Revan? Could it be that he himself is Deryni, and somehow has learned to take away his fellows’ powers?”

  “I couldn’t tell you that, Father, but this man is not Deryni now, and I’m almost certain their Master Revan is not and never has been,” Manfred said, signalling his soldiers to mount up, for the crowd was still uneasy and muttering and might well get nasty if they pressed their luck. “Now that I think about it, I’ve heard of this Revan before. They say he was a servant in the household of Rhys Thuryn and the daughter of Camber of Culdi. Gossip has it that the man believed Thuryn responsible for the death of his sweetheart and ran away, vowing to destroy Deryni. After that, he joined the Willimites and got religion. For a while, he was talking to stones up on a mountaintop—probably that one over there,” he added, gesturing sourly toward a nearby peak with his whip. “More recently, my brother says he’s been preaching the coming of some new pronouncement about Deryni. This is rare, though—to destroy them even as he ‘saves’ them from civil and religious persecution.”

  “I don’t like it,” the priest muttered. “The fellow should be taken into custody and questioned.”

  “From this mob?” Manfred returned. “I think I’d rather keep my head, thank you. We’ll return to Valoret and tell my brother, though. He’s an archbishop; let him decide what to do—and send a small army, if he does intend to take this Revan fellow away from his followers.”

  Hubert sent no army of any size, however, though he did decide to come to the Willimite encampment to see for himself just what Revan was doing. Because Manfred brought him the report in the evening, when he was supping with Javan, the prince also became privy to the latest news on Revan. And because Javan had been carefully building Hubert’s confidence for several days, both by open conversation and more subtle persuasion, it was no particular feat to be included in the party that Hubert shortly marshalled to revisit the site on the banks of the Eirian.

  Hubert, being already well informed about the progress of the quasi-Willimite cult, came rather better prepared than his brother had been, and brought Ursin O’Carroll as his personal Deryni sniffer, along with Father Lior and another experienced Custodes priest. They also brought a crack troop of Hubert’s episcopal cavalry, just in case Revan’s growing numbers of disciples took exception to their archbishop’s investigations.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Then they that gladly received his word were baptized.

  —Acts 2:41

  Three days after Pentecost, Javan drew rein with Archbishop Hubert at the top of the bluff overlooking the pool where the prophet Revan held daily court. The day was warm and fine. Javan’s plain black attire, suggestive of a junior cleric, made him all but invisible in the archbishop’s entourage. Father Lior, of the Custodes Fidei, rode at Hubert’s other side, and the Deryni sniffer Ursin O’Carroll was among the twenty Equites Custodium knights that Hubert had brought for a show of strength. Several more priests and other attendants rounded out the party, befitting Hubert’s rank. Though the throngs seated on the banks around the pool recognized their archbishop immediately, and reacted with suspicion to the presence of the armed men at his back, they did not recognize Javan—for who would have expected the presence of a prince of the blood, disguised as a cleric?

  Javan hoped Revan did. He would, if Joram had warned him as Javan asked. Javan had told the Michaeline all about the scenario he had worked out, if he actually got the chance to do what he planned. All morning he had been calculating the risks, as the archbishop’s party drew nearer and nearer the confrontation point, knowing that he could never anticipate all of them. And yet, the possible gains were inestimable. He hoped Revan did know—and Sylvan and Tavis. It would be extremely difficult if they did not, and far more dangerous.

  Javan tried not to appear too interested as he scanned the scene below them, searching for his Deryni allies. Revan had been preaching as they approached, and paused briefly as his audience murmured in faint hostility, raising a hand to quiet them before going on.

  “I do not presume to understand why the Lord has chosen me, the most lowly of His servants, to make His will known to you in this peculiar fashion. But chosen me He has, as many here can attest. And I come to proclaim His mercy to all who will humble themselves before the baptism of purification. Whether ye be Deryni or only tainted by their darkness, the Lord commands me to offer His grace to all who truly repent of their wickedness and would enter the cleansing waters. Now pray with me, my brothers and sisters, that hearts may be moved to guide feet toward His salvation.”

  “A dangerous message,” Father Lior murmured aside to Hubert, as Revan sank to his knees to lead the assembly in prayer. “Were he to be brought before a heresy tribunal, no one would think twice if he were found guilty and sentenced to burn.”

  “Aye.” Hubert nodded. “At very least, he skirts the edges of blasphemy, preaching a second baptism for the exorcism of Deryni evil. Yet even in his error, he does us a service, for he does preach that the Deryni are evil. Even better does he serve our cause if what he does is real.”

  “You think he does work miracles, then?” Lior asked, clearly disapproving.

  Hubert smiled, a prim, self-righteous pursing of the tiny, rosebud lips. “Whether they are miracles or not, dear Lior, I neither know nor care. But if he does make Deryni no longer what they were, then who am I to stand in his way?”

  “If, your Grace,” Lior murmured. “Such an important little word.”

  “My thought, precisely. Ursin?”

  Javan held his breath as the Deryni sullenly kneed his horse closer.

  “Aye, your Grace.”

  “Ursin, what think you of yon preacher? Do you think that Master Revan has been given some miraculous power to wash a Deryni clean of what he is?”

  Masking an uneasiness that only Javan seemed able to sense, Ursin shrugged. “I would not presume to consider myself qualified in matters of faith, your Grace.”

  “Ah,
no. Of course you would not. Well, do you think him Deryni, then? Or can he have discovered some fatal defect of your race which enables him to strip you of your power?”

  Before Ursin could reply, Lior snorted. “It’s all an illusion. The man has some odd charisma, and people want to believe that they’ve been cleansed of the Deryni taint—so they are, so far as they or anyone else is concerned. After all, we don’t actually know of any confirmed Deryni who have been ‘purified,’ now do we?”

  “Hmmm, my brother Manfred seemed to think that Gillebert of Droghera had been Deryni, and was no more.”

  “But based only on hearsay, your Grace,” Lior countered. “I say it’s all a colossal hoax.”

  “Indeed, it may well be,” Hubert agreed, thoughtfully stroking his multiple chins. “On the other hand, it occurs to me that we have the means to test this Revan even now, with someone we know is Deryni.”

  Ursin’s head snapped around to stare at the archbishop in disbelief. “Surely you’re not proposing that I should go down for this—baptism,” he whispered.

  Javan, praying that Hubert meant to do precisely that, could hardly believe that no one heard his heart pounding.

  “Why not?” Hubert said. “If he’s a fraud, who better to unmask him? And if he isn’t—which seems at least possible—then you, too, will be ‘delivered.’”

  “And will that save me, I wonder?” Ursin said bitterly. “If I am no longer of any use to you, will I end like Declan Carmody’s family, coughing out my life against a knotted bowstring?”

  Hubert studied the ends of the reins in his gloved hands. “You could end it like Carmody himself, if you prefer,” he said coolly. “But, be of good cheer. If this Revan is real, and you should become ‘merely human,’ do you think I would not rejoice? I am your spiritual father, Ursin. Your salvation is my dearest concern.”

  Grimacing, Ursin glanced down at the prophet, now entering the water with several of his disciples, as several more began shepherding the faithful into orderly lines to await his ministrations.