Camber of Culdi

by Katherine Kurtz

  Today, the Eve of Christmas, was doubly difficult, since each of the five of them present in the room knew what the night must bring—and Cinhil was still having none of it. He had been telling them so for the past two hours.

  Camber decided that it was time to change the direction of the discussion.

  “Tell me, Your Highness, does your silence mean that you condone what the king is doing?” Camber asked, when Cinhil’s arguments against matrimony had at least temporarily run down.

  Cinhil looked at the older man sharply and started to make an indignant retort, then remembered who he was desperately trying to be and folded his hands piously instead.

  “I am a man of God,” he said evenly. “I could never condone the deaths of innocent men.”

  “No, but you could cause them,” Joram said. “By your non-action,” he added, when Cinhil opened his mouth as though to protest.

  Cinhil turned back toward the fireplace, hands clasped stubbornly behind his back. “I cannot be concerned with the affairs of the world. You do not understand my mission.”

  “No, it’s you who don’t understand,” Camber corrected. “Can’t you get it through your head that you’re involved already with the outside world, that a great number of people are going through a lot of pain and suffering, and some of them dying, because they believe in you and your cause?”

  “My cause?” Cinhil retorted. “Nay, ’tis yours. I never asked to be made king. I never wanted anything but to be left alone, to find my peace with myself.”

  “And can you be at peace,” Evaine murmured, “when you know that you could make a great change in the world, that you could ease much suffering? And yet, you do nothing.”

  “What would you know of such things?” Cinhil snapped. “Am I not a man? Am I not entitled to lead my own life as I see fit?”

  Camber sighed impatiently. “If you were my son, speaking that irresponsibly, I’d thrash you within an inch of your life, even at your age!”

  “You wouldn’t dare!” Cinhil stated, a hard edge of command biting into his words.

  Camber controlled the urge to smile a little as he noted the reply. “No, you’re right, I wouldn’t. And part of the reason is because you’re starting to sound like a prince, despite your best efforts to the contrary. Do you think that Brother Benedict would have answered me the way you did just now?”

  Cinhil dropped his gaze to the floor uncomfortably, the whir of his tangled emotions almost audible, then fumbled his way awkwardly to his chair and sat. He would not look at Camber, and he was keeping his hands folded in his lap only with a visible exertion of control.

  “I—I’m sorry. Please forgive me.”

  “Forgive you? For acting like a man for once? Certainly not. Don’t you see, you are Prince Cinhil Haldane. That is where your destiny lies—not in the alias of your Brother Benedict. Think of that identity as a temporary refuge, which you used when it was needed, which kept you safe until it was time to answer your greater call.”

  “But—”

  “Princes are not like ordinary men, Cinhil. They have obligations—don’t you understand?—to push back and defeat the destroyers. Your royal line had a knack for it in the old days. Your great-great-grandsire, father to that same Ifor Haldane whose portrait hangs on yonder wall, was known among his people as Saint Bearand, even during his lifetime. It wasn’t all for being gentle and pious, either, though he was that. He pushed the Moorish invaders back into the sea and broke the back of their naval power once and for all. Their legions have never dared to cross the great wastes or to sail the Southern Seas again. That saintly man did all of this.”

  Cinhil was silent for a long moment, but when he spoke his voice was edged with bitterness. “Saint Bearand. Very pretty. Of course, you’re not asking me to do anything as spectacular as pushing back the Moors—no, only to forsake my priestly vows and depose a powerful Deryni king. And you’ll have to admit that there’s little, chance of an apostate priest ever being known as Saint Cinhil.”

  “Is that your aim: sainthood?” Rhys asked quietly. “Most of us are not so proud as to think that we could ever attain that kind of perfection.”

  Cinhil recoiled as though struck a physical blow, myriad emotions flashing across his face in rapid succession. Then he sagged in his chair, his hands fluttering uncertainly as he searched for the proper words.

  “It—it isn’t like that at all. How can I make you understand what it’s like to be able to live a life totally committed to God? Father Joram might, if he weren’t constantly playing devil’s advocate, but …”

  As he spoke, the door opened quietly behind him and Alister Cullen appeared in the doorway, pausing unseen to listen as the prince continued.

  “It’s as though you’re shielded in a soft, golden light, floating about a handspan off the ground, and you’re safe from anything that might try to harm you, because you know that He is there, all around you,” Cinhil said, wrapped up now in his own remembrance. “It’s as though—you reach out with your mind and grasp a beam of sunlight, yet even as you grasp it, it’s all around. You …”

  As Cinhil spoke, his eyes took on a strange, other glow, and the air around him became gently suffused with light—a pale, ghostly flickering which was almost, but not quite, indiscernible in the firelight and wavering candle flames. Camber was the first to notice it, followed almost immediately by Rhys; and Camber shook his head slightly as Rhys started to make a reaction. While Cinhil rambled on dreamily, his words no longer important to Camber, the Deryni lord reached out with his own senses and poised on the brink, mentally ready to fling himself across the void to essay the opening he could sense was imminent.

  Cullen must have made some indication of his presence at that instant, for Cinhil suddenly turned in his chair and saw the vicar general. He broke off his detached monologue in mid-syllable, before Camber could make the contact he had so desperately sought. As Cinhil scrambled to his feet to bow nervously to the vicar general, Camber let out a long sigh which was mentally echoed by Rhys. Joram and Evaine appeared unaware of the exchange, until Camber saw Evaine touch her brother’s hand and nod.

  “Father Cullen,” Cinhil murmured.

  Cullen returned the bow, scowling somewhat. “Your Highness.” He flicked his gaze past Cinhil to Rhys. “Lady Megan is here, Rhys. I think you should see her before she’s given any further information. Camber, we told her you’d sent for her. I think you ought to be the one to tell her why.”

  Camber got to his feet with a sigh and nodded, glancing at the wide-eyed Cinhil with an almost fatherly mien, despite the fact that there was only a dozen or so years’ difference in their ages.

  “Your bride has arrived, Your Highness. I’ll send her in to meet you in a little while.”

  “My—my bride?” Cinhil croaked, his face gray against his velvet robe.

  “The Lady Megan de Cameron, my ward,” Camber said, studying Cinhil’s reaction hopefully. “She’s human like yourself—a lovely, well-bred girl. She’ll make you a worthy queen and wife.”

  “I—My lord, I cannot!”

  “Your Highness, you will,” Camber replied, his eyes flint-hard on Cinhil’s face. “Evaine, will you join Rhys and me? Megan is far from home, and will appreciate another woman’s reassurance.” He bowed stiffly. “By your leave, Your Highness,” he said, and turned and followed Cullen out the door.

  When they had gone, a shaken Cinhil turned back to the circle of chairs by the fire, startled to find Joram still sitting there, unmoving, studying him with an infuriating detachment.

  “You’re still here,” Cinhil said—then immediately felt foolish because that fact, at least, was abundantly clear.

  To cover his discomfiture, he wandered to the fireplace and poked the toe of his slipper dangerously close to a smoldering coal, then ran a trembling fingertip along the wing of an ivory statue of the Archangel Michael on the mantel.

  “Father Joram, is there nothing I can say which will soften your heart?” he fin
ally asked in a small voice.

  “Yours is the heart which must be softened, Your Highness,” Joram replied. “Weighed in the greater balance, one man’s personal wishes have little substance. You have the wherewithal to stop the slayings, the persecutions, to restore order and peace to the people your forefathers ruled and loved. I should think the choice an easy one. How can you, who claim to know the love of God, turn your heart from His people, your people, while Imre ravishes the land and brutalizes them?”

  “They’re not my people,” Cinhil whispered. “Not in that sense.”

  “Ah, but they are,” Joram replied, pointing a finger at him emphatically. “I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine.”

  “No!”

  “I am the good shepherd, and I lay down my life for the sheep.”

  Cinhil cast a desperate, frantic look at the door through which Camber and Rhys and Evaine had disappeared. “I beseech you, Father Joram, spare me this. I cannot do it. You know the vows I took. You, of all people—”

  “Priest or prince, sheep or people, you can stop Imre, Your Highness.”

  “I pray you, do not do this!”

  “Think on it, Your Highness,” Joram said, rising and moving toward the door. “Where, if anywhere, is the break between your duty to God and your obligations to His people, your people? Is there even a difference?”

  “I vowed vows,” Cinhil moaned.

  Joram paused in the doorway to gaze compassionately at his fellow priest.

  “Feed my sheep,” he whispered—then slipped out and closed the door behind him.

  Cinhil spent the next hour on his knees, storming the heavens relentlessly for the answer he craved so desperately, and which he feared, more and more, would not come. At length, when his supplications had left him no more comforted than when he had begun, he lurched to his feet and stumbled to a small table near the fireplace. Hands shaking, he poured a cup of wine and gulped it down.

  They would send her to him soon. Only, he had no idea what he was supposed to do or say. He supposed that he was to make sure he did not find her too ugly, or stupid, or whatever it was he was supposed to use as a gauge for measuring what his future—wife!—the word shook him—should or should not be.

  But he didn’t want to see her. It was unthinkable enough that he must face her in the chapel tonight, before God and all his Deryni captors. They would force him to go through with it. His and Camber’s parting words had been almost a threat.

  “My lord, I cannot!”

  “Your Highness, you will!”

  And, he realized sickly, he would. He would have to. It was clear by now that they were determined to have their way with him, that they would settle for nothing less than a crown on his head, a wife at his side, the Deryni Imre toppled from his throne.

  He trembled anew at that thought, his mind going back immediately to the very real threat of their power. They were Deryni. God knew, they would probably make him obey, if he continued to resist them. Even the usually patient Camber had become almost menacing today.

  The idea that he did not really have control over the coming event was comforting for a moment, for it relieved him of the responsibility for making the decision himself—at least for a time. But then he was forced to recognize another, darker part of himself which he had thought buried for many, many years, and somehow that frightened him even more.

  Was he afraid of the wrath of Heaven if he broke his monastic vows and left the priesthood? Or was he afraid that it would be all too easy to break them, that he was actually beginning to look forward to this new life they had been waving so tantalizingly before him for these past weeks? The remark Camber had made about him beginning to sound like a prince had hit agonizingly close to home. He had sounded like a prince—or what he had always imagined a prince would sound like—and, at the same time, it had been the most natural thing in the world. It terrified him in a way he had never been frightened before in his life.

  And to marry! He poured another cup of wine—fortunately, the cup was small—and drained it. To take a wife he had never seen, to—he forced himself to think in the scriptural term—to “know” her, to beget heirs—

  He found his hands shaking, and he could not seem to make them stop. What was he doing? This was not the sort of thing a man should have to worry about—especially not a man of forty-three who had never known a woman. Why, marriage was supposed to be a young man’s game. It was madness. They were insane!

  He heard a fumbling at the doorlatch, and he turned away and froze. There was a pause, and then the sound of soft footsteps entering the room. He closed his eyes. He did not want to see her. He could not bring himself to turn.

  “Your Highness …?”

  The voice was timid, shy, and sounded very young. Cinhil’s eyes flew open and his shoulders tensed, but he found himself rooted to the spot, unable to move. They had sent him a child, a mere girl! He could not marry a child!

  “I—I beg your pardon, Your Highness, but they told me I should come to you. I’m Megan de Cameron. I’m to be your wife.”

  Cinhil bowed his head, leaning heavily against the table in front of him. The irony of her position, coupled with his own, had suddenly struck him, and he had an almost uncontrollable urge to laugh.

  “Is that what they told you, child? How old are you?”

  “Fif—fifteen, Highness.” She paused. “I beg Your Highness’s pardon, but—have I misunderstood my guardian’s intent? Are we not to be married this night?”

  Cinhil smiled, a bitter chuckle escaping his lips despite his best efforts. “Aye, little lass. Though ’tis dynastic considerations and none other which ordain this marriage. The lost King of Gwynedd must have a wife. You’re to be the royal broodmare, don’t you see?”

  “No, Your Highness, I’m to be your Queen,” the young voice replied, strangely mature-sounding now, in the hollow silence his laughter had left.

  Cinhil’s face froze and he looked down at his hands, not seeing them at all. He wondered what had possessed him to say so cruel a thing, realizing he had hurt her.

  “If you marry me, you will be the mother either of kings or of traitors, if we all live that long, child. Are you truly willing to risk the latter, with a man who cannot love you as a husband should, who can never give you ought but woe?”

  “Who cannot love, Your Highness?” the voice asked softly.

  “I am a priest, child. Did they not tell you?”

  Another long silence followed, and then: “They told me that you are the last Haldane, Your Highness; that they would make you king.” The voice was low, almost husky with tears. “I said I would risk all, even unto my life, to bring back the Haldane line and end Imre’s bloody rule; and so I shall.” A short sob escaped her. “But if, in your heart, there is no room for love, I had liefer die a maid than be the unloved bride of God himself!”

  As Cinhil froze in shock at the blasphemy of her words, he heard her footsteps running toward the door, whirled just in time to see a mane of wheaten hair disappearing from sight, a delicate hand pulling the door behind her, a slender ankle flashing beneath voluminous turquoise skirts. Then the door was reverberating from the force with which she slammed it, and he was standing there all alone, a hand unwittingly outstretched in the direction she had gone, his heart wrenched by her words.

  He started to follow her, to apologize, to try to explain that he was not a king at all, that he was but a simple monk, that he had never wanted to be king or even prince—but then the old pathways took over and it was too late. Like an old man, he sank slowly to a bench beside the table, letting his hand fall loosely to his side.

  And then he put his head down upon the table and wept long, bitter tears for his lost youth, his lost faith, for himself, for the girl—whose name he could not even recall—and for all of them who would be lost. They would find him there, unmoved, when they came a few hours later to prepare him for his wedding.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  T
he Lord said to my lord, “You are my son. This day I have begotten you!”

  —Psalms 2:7

  It was on the Vigil of Christmas, the night of the Saviour’s birth, that Archbishop Anscom of Trevas left his Evensong devotions in the Lady Chapel of All Saints’ Cathedral in Valoret and made his way back to his apartments, there to watch and pray until it should be time to celebrate the first Mass of Christmas. As was his custom on Christmas Eve, he was preparing to meditate alone upon the successes and failures of the fleeing year. He was not expecting the gray-hooded shadow which stepped from a recess in the corridor just before he reached the refuge of his chambers.

  “Will you hear my confession, Father?” asked a strangely familiar voice.

  Anscom held his candle a little higher and tried to pierce the gloom and darkness surrounding the man’s face. Then he realized that it was more than mere shadow which shrouded the speaker’s visage. The man in the cowled gray robe was a Deryni, his head veiled in an arcane haze which obscured his features and also muffled his voice. And yet there was no hint of menace in the voice or the presence, no threat of danger. The mysterious visitor was benign, though still unrecognizable.

  More curious and anticipatory than alarmed, Anscom bowed his head in acquiescence and held the door open for the man to enter, then closed it behind them. No words were spoken as Anscom crossed to his oratory and lit another candle, took a purple stole from the prie-dieu there, touched it to his lips, and draped it around his neck. But when he turned to face the man again, the visitor reached to his hood and pushed it back to reveal a head of gilded silver hair, a countenance long familiar and loved.

  “Camber!” the archbishop breathed, then embraced the other man warmly.

  “Praise God, I wondered where you’d been,” Anscom whispered, as the two parted and he held his friend at arm’s length to look at him. “When I learned that ‘Brother Kyriell’—But, what are you doing here? Surely you know that the king has out a warrant for your arrest.”