Childe Morgan

by Katherine Kurtz

  “I truly did not expect you here tonight, Sire,” she said softly. “It did not occur to me that you would wish to assist me in this matter.”

  “Did it not?” He raised one eyebrow in slight amusement as he slipped his gloves under his belt. “Nonetheless, I am here, and alone save for the three of us, and dare not tarry too long before my guard escort discovers I am not at Castle Rundel, an hour’s ride from here, and fears for my safety. Will you prepare me, please? I would not profane your circle further by my untimely entrance.”

  Surprised, she managed a nod and drew the hood of her cloak back onto her pale hair, took his hand, and led him into the center of the circle, where he crouched by the table on one knee. After renewing the incense, Alyce censed him with the sweet smoke, offered him the holy water so that he might dip his fingers into it and bless himself.

  He closed his eyes and remained motionless for several minutes after that, head bowed, his breathing light and barely audible, and she wondered again how he knew what must be done, how he had learned of this most ancient of Deryni traditions, when he was not himself Deryni. She watched him sidelong as she quietly exchanged Duncan’s ash-smudged bowl for a new one and brought out a fresh slip of parchment. She glanced briefly at Kenneth, once again a silent shadow in the doorway.

  As for Alaric, he had not stirred, through all the interruption of the king’s arrival. He still sat huddled in his tiny cape, eyes closed in deep Deryni trancing. His candle flame gilded his face and washed the white-gold hair with yet more gold, playing light and shadow on the soft contours of his features. She started to go to him, but her movement triggered Donal’s awareness and he came to his feet, laying a restraining hand on her wrist.

  “Nay, I shall bring him,” the king said softly. “There is a bond between us. He will come to me.”

  Numb, her senses whirling, Alyce watched him go to her sleeping son, remembering how very nearly he had also been Donal’s child instead of Kenneth’s. Roused by the king’s soft word and touch, the boy put his small hand into the king’s larger one, smiling, and scrambled to his feet, picking up his candle and walking with Donal to the table where his mother waited anxiously.

  Pushing back her apprehensions, Alyce knelt down beside her son so that they were at the same level, smiling to reassure him as her eyes searched his wide grey ones with love.

  “Hello, my darling,” she murmured, watching his face light at the sound of her voice. “Did you have a little nap?”

  “Oh, no, Mummy, I wasn’t asleep,” the boy replied, shaking his head with the gravity of an adult. “I watched the candle, just like you said. I watched and watched.”

  With a smile, she took the candle from him and set it on the table, then hugged him close for just a moment before withdrawing to look at him again, her hands enfolding his lightly between them.

  “Darling, Mummy wants to ask you a few questions. It will be like school, when Father Anselm teaches you about the saints. Would that be all right?”

  The boy nodded solemnly, and Alyce echoed his nod. Suddenly it was very important that he answer well, as much for the man who stood behind him as for her own reassurance. Alaric was only just four, so she knew she was asking a great deal, but Duncan, who was even younger, had answered well enough….

  “Alaric,” she began, “I know that Father Anselm has talked to you about the difference between right and wrong.”

  Alaric nodded solemnly.

  “Do you think you can tell me about something that’s wrong? Can you give me an example?”

  The boy cocked his head thoughtfully, then looked at her with all the wisdom of his four years.

  “Do you mean just naughty, like when I kick Cousin Kevin, or really bad?”

  Alyce had to concentrate to keep from smiling at the sagacity of that answer. She need not have worried about her son’s understanding.

  “Something really bad, I think. Tell me about something that is really wrong.”

  “Oh. Well, killing people, or hurting them on purpose. Taking things that don’t belong to you.”

  “I see. And what do you think about people who do those things?”

  A stormy look came across the boy’s face. “They shouldn’t do them, Mummy! God doesn’t like it! The king doesn’t like it, either!”

  “The king?” Alyce resisted the urge to look up at Donal, still standing motionless behind the boy, and wondered whether Alaric was aware of what he had just said. “What do you know about the king, my love?”

  “Well, he works for God,” the boy said in a matter-of-fact tone. “Papa told me. He says that we should love the king, almost as much as we love God, and we should keep our promises to him, and we should try to help him do good things.”

  Alyce heard Donal make a small, strangled sound somewhere between a cough and a smothered chuckle, but she dared not look up to see which it was. God knew, she had not coached the boy in his answers, and certainly had not expected that the king might be present to hear them, but she thanked whatever lucky providence had made Kenneth spend time regaling the boy with tales of kingly attributes.

  As much to cover her relief as anything else, she hugged Alaric close once again, at last chancing a look up at the silent king. Donal’s grey eyes were glittering with mirth, his lips pursed in the only expression he could manage without breaking out into a very unkingly grin.

  “Yes, we should help the king,” she whispered, stroking her son’s golden head and brushing his hair with a kiss. “You’ve answered very well. In fact, you’ve answered so well that Mummy is going to give you a special prize. Would you like that?”

  “A prize?” he replied, as she reached her arms around him and picked up the quill, putting it in his hand and guiding it to the inkwell.

  Donal also knelt beside them, one hand resting lightly on the boy’s shoulder, though Alaric seemed not to be aware of that fact.

  “I am going to give you a new name, a secret name,” Alyce said, as she guided his hand in a first vertical stroke. “It will be a special name, a name of power, for when you are a grown man, and it will be—”

  “His name shall be Airleas, which means a pledge,” Donal interrupted softly, his free hand touching Alyce’s just as she was starting to form another letter besides an A.

  In an instant of bewilderment, Alyce felt her hand moving into the second stroke of the A as if that were the letter she had intended all along, her voice picking up where it had left off, only with Donal’s words.

  “Your name shall be Airleas, which means a pledge.” Her hand, with the boy’s enfolded in it, finished the A and swept into the I, the R. “A pledge is a promise. So this name means that you are to keep your promise to do good things and to help the king.”

  The L and the E flowed off her quill and swept on into the second A, the final S.

  “Airleas,” she said again, as she laid the quill across the back of the table and wondered what had become of the name she had chosen. “Air-le-us. Say it for me.”

  “Air-le-us,” the boy parroted.

  “Which means?”

  “A promise.”

  “That’s exactly right. A promise or a pledge. Airleas.”

  She picked up the parchment and blew on the ink to finish drying it, then laid it in the little earthen bowl. Almost, she could not remember that there had ever been another name besides Airleas. She wondered, as the last memory of that other name faded, just what the king had done to her, and why—though she could not bring herself to resent it. Already, Donal’s hand had closed around the hilt of the little dagger, now held it braced against the snowy table covering. The blade flashed candlelight once in Alaric’s eyes, catching and holding his fascinated attention.

  Alyce drew a deep breath, suspecting that Donal had done that intentionally, not feeling further words necessary. Almost absently, she pressed her forefinger to the dagger’s point until it drew blood, let a drop fall on the parchment they had just inscribed.

  Alaric watched the process gr
avely, not hesitating when Donal turned the blade slightly toward him. He pushed his smaller fingertip onto the point without flinching, gave no sign of pain or fear as the blood welled. Without prompting, he himself touched the first glistening droplet to the parchment before popping his wounded finger into his mouth.

  As Vera had done, Alyce then produced one of Kenneth’s hairs to seal the naming, affixing it to the parchment with wax from Alaric’s candle. But when she would have passed the candle to Alaric for him to light the parchment, Donal stayed her hand, rising to peer back in Kenneth’s direction and lift a hand in summons.

  “Kenneth, join us, please,” he said softly. “Leave your sword, and come ’round the way I came.”

  Dutifully Kenneth leaned his sword against the door frame and began circling to the left to flank the circle, keeping a wary eye on the golden shimmer at his right shoulder. As he came, Donal moved to the east and picked up the sword laid across the threshold, saluted the east, cut a new gate before the altar. He lifted the blade in challenge just as Kenneth came into the gateway, bringing him to an abrupt halt with steel against his breastbone and empty hands half lifting, their gaze locking along the length of shining steel.

  “Know that no deception is possible within this circle,” the king said quietly, then lifted his blade in permission and salute, reversed it to shift to his other hand, grasping it under the quillons. “Now enter in peace.”

  Visibly bracing himself, Kenneth took the hand that Donal extended and passed through the gateway, waiting as the king resealed the gate and laid the sword across the threshold. Alyce had been watching all of it, and beckoned for her husband to join her on Alaric’s right as the king sank down on the left.

  “You have seen how the children were sealed to their Naming,” Donal said quietly to Kenneth, taking up the dagger. “For a simple Naming, your hair was sufficient to link you to your son, but the work eventually required of Alaric will be anything but simple, and it may be that he will need your assistance. Such assistance requires a bond of blood—but only a drop,” he added with a faint smile, handing the dagger to Kenneth. “I would have you in my service long after tonight.”

  At his nod of reassurance—and Alyce’s—Kenneth briskly nicked a fingertip with the blade and smudged his blood on the parchment beside hers and Alaric’s. But when he handed the dagger back to Donal, offering it hilt-first, the king turned its point against his own thumb, not flinching as the blade bit and royal blood welled around it, dripping onto the parchment. When he had set aside the blade, briefly sucking at his wound, he took Alaric’s two hands in his and fixed him with his grey Haldane gaze.

  “Alaric Anthony Morgan, Airleas, be thou my son as well as theirs,” Donal whispered, gazing deeply into the boy’s eyes, “and be the pledge for Haldane blood, now until forever…And say Amen.”

  The boy’s mouth moved obediently in the response, but his voice was only a whisper, his eyes wide as saucers. Smiling, the king kissed him gently on the forehead, then glanced at Alyce and nodded slightly.

  Numbly, as though she watched through another’s eyes, she saw herself putting her son’s candle in his hand, heard herself telling him to light the parchment. As the parchment flared hot and bright, burning with the faint aroma of singed blood, the boy watched in fascination, pupils black as ink. Kenneth had subsided back on his hunkers, eyes closed and head bowed, hands resting easily on his thighs with fingers splayed, now oblivious to what was taking place.

  When the parchment had burned to ash, Alyce dipped her thumb in the residue and traced the cross on her son’s brow as she sealed his name by word and thought. Then the king was laying his hands on either side of Alaric’s head and delving deep, crowding her out to watch helplessly as he set his will upon the young mind.

  When he had finished, he allowed Alyce to enfold the boy in her arms again, himself rising to go to the edge of the circle where the sword lay across the threshold. Kenneth had lifted his head as the king rose, aware once again, and watched him cut the doorway to the east and gesture for Alyce to proceed.

  Not speaking, Alyce put her son’s candle in his hand and led him to the threshold, gently nudging him to go through. The boy went fearlessly up the three steps to place his candle beside that of his younger cousin. When he had returned to his mother’s arms, a pleased grin on his face, he melted into her embrace and laid his head on her shoulder, asleep in one softly exhaled breath.

  Wordless with wonder, Alyce sank into a sitting position with her son cradled in her lap, taking comfort in the circle of Kenneth’s arm, watching as the king laid the sword across the open doorway and came to crouch before them. She could not bring herself to question what he had done, or even to offer comment. She knew only that what had occurred had felt right, if unexpected, and that he was fully her match in all that they had done together that night.

  “I will come again when he is older, to complete the binding,” the king said quietly. “It is not necessary for you to understand all aspects of what has occurred tonight; only that I have done what I felt necessary. He will have suffered no harm.

  “Of course, you will speak of this to no one,” he went on, eyeing both of them. “Not even to one another—nor, Alyce, to your sister.”

  She nodded, not daring to speak, as he glanced back at the sword across the gateway, then returned his piercing gaze to her and Kenneth and the child sleeping on her shoulder, while getting slowly to his feet.

  “Guard him well, my faithful friends,” he said in a low voice. “And know that you have a king’s gratitude for your love and loyal service.”

  For a moment, as he stood there silhouetted against the candles at the altar, it was as though he drew their glow around him like a mantle, enveloping the four of them. But then the grey eyes shuttered, and the moment was past. With a slight bow, he turned and moved back to the eastern quarter to pick up the sword.

  SHE little remembered closing the circle, or putting the sleeping Alaric to bed, or returning to her chamber with Kenneth, just as she was unable, the next morning, to recall many details of the night’s work. She knew that the king had come into the chapel, that the two of them had Named Alaric by a name she had not chosen—and her beloved Kenneth had played an unexpected part. But the whole affair had taken on a dreamy, unreal quality that increased with each passing day—and Kenneth, for his part, said nothing.

  It was not for want of wondering. Kenneth remembered that night, perhaps more clearly than Alyce, though he understood far less. When, a few days later, a courier arrived with a summons back to Rhemuth and duty, he brought the order to Alyce, where she was dozing in the dappled shade of the garden, near to the little chapel. Alaric was down for a nap, as were Duncan and Kevin, and Vera had gone hunting with her husband and several of their retainers and their wives.

  “Unwelcome news, I’m afraid,” he said without preamble, showing her the document with the king’s seal as he came to kiss her on the forehead. “I’m commanded back to court. Not merely summoned, mind you, but ‘commanded.’ He’s given no specific reason, but it can’t be trivial. He knows I had hoped to stay longer, perhaps even through the New Year. But it may be some weeks before I can return. And if the weather is bad…”

  She did her best to hide her disappointment as she took the missive from him and quickly scanned it, but Kenneth knew. But he did not anticipate her next words.

  “Perhaps I should go back to Morganhall for my lying-in, then,” she said matter-of-factly, looking up at him from under long lashes. “The summer heat is past, and ’tis far closer to Rhemuth—and much less apt to be snowed in. And I should very much like to have you at my side when our daughter is born.”

  “And I should like to be there,” Kenneth replied. “Do you think that Vera would come there to be with you?”

  “I don’t see why not,” she answered. “’Twould be easier for her and Jared, as well, especially if Jared is also called to court—which could well happen, since you have been called. They would l
ike another baby, you know—and that’s rather difficult if they hardly see one another.”

  “There is that,” Kenneth agreed. “But Culdi is larger, and far more comfortable.”

  “But not as close to Rhemuth, and you,” Alyce countered. “Morganhall will be fine. And your sisters will be thrilled to have a new baby to coo over.”

  He inclined his head in agreement. “I’ll not argue that.”

  “Then, it’s settled,” she said.

  KENNETH dared not delay to travel with them, for the king seemed to require his presence urgently—and, in fact, had summoned Jared as well, by means of another courier who arrived later that evening.

  “You have no idea what this is about?” Jared asked him, handing him his own summons.

  Kenneth shook his head. “None whatsoever. But Alyce had already asked whether Vera and your boys might accompany them to Morganhall. There’s room—just. And it’s far closer. You could see your wife more often,” he added with a sly grin. “I know you’d like another bairn.”

  Jared’s smile spoke volumes. “I’ll not deny that,” he said, “though it isn’t for want of trying.”

  “Well, you can try more often, if your wife is at Morganhall,” Kenneth retorted. “Shall I write to my sisters, and tell them the ladies are coming?”

  “Do,” Jared agreed. “Better yet, we can stop there on our way back to Rhemuth and tell them in person. The women can follow by easier stages. And I’ll have extra provisions sent as well. They’ll have more mouths to feed.”

  Kenneth inclined his head in thanks. “My sisters will be grateful.”

  HE and Jared left the next morning, charging Trevor and Llion with the task of moving their wives and sons by slow stages. On reflection, Jared offered the use of his coach—which Kenneth gladly accepted. It was a ponderous thing, but easier and safer than travel by litter, with Alyce now seven months gone.

  “And Lady Alyce is not to travel by any other means save the coach, no matter how she might protest,” Kenneth told the two knights, “with plenty of pillows and featherbeds to cushion her.”