High Deryni

by Katherine Kurtz

  Carsten opened his mouth and then shut it again, rather like a fish gulping air. Then he bowed and edged back with the rest of his colleagues. After a pause, those in the rear of the group turned and began making their way from the room. As they filed out, Nigel and the generals returned to their maps and resumed their interrupted discussion, though much subdued.

  Kelson watched as Morgan led Duncan back to a window seat and talked with him for several minutes, then joined the fringes of the war council. Markers clicked and voices were raised and lowered with the tension of revising their plans, but after a while Kelson turned away from the council and walked slowly to one of the fireplaces. He was joined shortly by Morgan, who had noticed his withdrawal, even if no one else had.

  “I hope that you’re not going to try to insist that Bran’s defection was all your fault,” Morgan said in a low voice. “I’ve just listened to Duncan tell me how this could all have been avoided, if only he had been at Rengarth with his father’s army.”

  Kelson lowered his eyes, studying a scuff mark on the leather of his wide belt. “No.” He paused. “Bran’s wife and his heir are here in Dhassa, did you know?”

  “I am not surprised. Did they come here for sanctuary?”

  Kelson shrugged. “I suppose so. There are a lot of women and children staying here. Bran has a manor not far away, but apparently he decided that Dhassa would be safer for them. I don’t suppose he expected how things would turn out. I would like to think that he didn’t.”

  “I doubt that Bran’s defection was premeditated,” Morgan said, if only to reassure the king. “No man would deliberately send his wife and his heir into hostage bond if he could prevent it.”

  “But the potential was there—it had to be,” Kelson murmured. “And I should have recognized it. We all knew that Bran had great passions—and great hatreds. I should never have sent him so close to the front.”

  “I thought you were not going to blame yourself,” Morgan said with a slight smile. “If it’s any consolation, I would have done the same thing and been just as wrong. You cannot be right all the time.”

  “I should have known,” Kelson repeated doggedly. “It was my business to know. I am the king.”

  Morgan sighed and glanced distractedly at the war council, wishing he could change the subject.

  “You mentioned an heir—do you think he’ll give us any trouble?”

  Kelson snorted, a sardonic smile coming to his lips. “Young Brendan? I hardly think so. He’s only three or four years old.” He sobered, staring into the flames in the stone fireplace before him. “I dread telling his countess, though. From all reports, she and her family have always been the soul of Crown loyalty. It will not be easy to tell her that her husband is a traitor.”

  “Do you want me to come along?”

  Kelson shook his head. “No, this is my job. You are needed with the generals. Besides, I have had a bit of practice dealing with hysterical women, if it comes to that. My mother was very good at that sort of thing, you know.”

  Morgan smiled, remembering the beautiful and stubborn Queen Jehana, now in sanctuary at a monastery in the heart of Gwynedd, grappling with her Deryni soul. Yes, Kelson had had ample experience dealing with distraught women. Morgan had no doubt that Kelson could handle the situation admirably—and alone.

  “Very well, my prince,” he said with a slight bow. “Nigel and I will wind up things here in the next hour, and then send the men off to get some sleep. I’ll send word to your quarters if there’s need of your personal attention.”

  Kelson nodded, glad of the opportunity to slip away without further words, and turned on his heel to leave. As he made his exit, Duncan stirred from his window seat, glanced at Morgan, then crossed the room and left by the same door, heading in the opposite direction.

  Morgan watched him go, knowing that his cousin needed to be alone just now, then made his way back to the map table and shouldered his way to a position where he could see and hear. Aides had set up new markers to show Bran Coris’s alliance with Wencit of Torenth, and the plains between Dhassa and Cardosa were empty, now that Jared’s army no longer occupied them.

  Far to the north, the bright orange markers of Duke Ewan’s forces were deployed along the farthest reaches of the border; but they were relatively few, and their position could not be counted upon. Indeed, in light of the past hour’s news, even Ewan’s army might no longer exist. The royal army gathered here at Dhassa might be the only thing now standing between Wencit and the rest of Gwynedd.

  “So we know for certain only that Jared was defeated south of Cardosa, somewhere here on the Rengarth plain,” Nigel was saying, tracing the location with a forefinger. “We don’t know how many men Wencit has, but Bran’s forces numbered somewhere in the neighborhood of thirty-five hundred, at last report. So far as we know, they’re still camped somewhere along here.” He pointed out the eastern border of a plain at the mouth of the Cardosa Defile.

  “Now, we have about twelve thousand men, with our combined armies. With a day’s forced march, we can swing around the end of the Coamer Range and be in position for the defile by dusk tomorrow. Once we reach that position, though, each of us will have to hold his assigned area at whatever cost. We don’t know how many men Wencit has added to Bran’s forces.”

  Grunts of agreement met this declaration.

  “Very well, then. Elas, I’ll expect you and General Remie to hold the left flank, here. Godwin, you and Mortimer will…”

  Nigel went on, detailing each general’s responsibilities in the final marching order and battle arrangements, and Morgan drew back a little to watch the men’s reactions. After a while, one of Nigel’s military aides came in with a flat stack of dispatches for Nigel, but Morgan intercepted them and began leafing through them himself, so that Nigel need not be disturbed. The seals identified most of them as routine, and Morgan did not trouble himself with more than a cursory glance at those. But there was one—a stained, brown packet with a yellow seal—that eluded immediate recognition.

  With a slight frown of anxious speculation, Morgan broke the seal and opened the letter, stifling a gasp of amazement as he scanned the contents.

  Then he was pushing his way back to Nigel’s side, gripping the duke’s shoulder in excitement as he caught and held the attention of the others with his eyes.

  “Your pardon, Nigel, but this is welcome news. Gentlemen, I have in my hand a dispatch from General Gloddruth, who, as most of you know, was with Duke Jared’s army at Ren—”

  Exclamations of excitement and disbelief cut off further speech, and Morgan had to rap on the table with his knuckles before order was restored. It was with obvious restraint that the men ceased their excited speculation and listened for his next words.

  “Gloddruth says that Jared was definitely wounded and captured, not killed,” Morgan went on, consulting the letter, “along with the Earl of Jenas, the Sieur de Canlavay, and Lords Lester, Harkness, Collier, and Bishop Richard of Nyford. He says that he and Lord Burchard managed to bring out about a hundred men between them, and he thinks that a few hundred more may have escaped to the west.”

  There was a ragged cheer at this last, but Morgan held up his hand for silence.

  “This is welcome news, of course, but Gloddruth goes on to say that he counts the battle a total rout. They were taken completely by surprise. He estimates that sixty per cent of the army was killed outright, and almost all of the others were taken captive. He will meet us at Drellingham tomorrow, with those he was able to bring out.”

  “Sixty per cent?”

  “The Hell you say!”

  “Morgan, where did—”

  “What else does it say, Your Grace?”

  Morgan shook his head and began easing his way to the door, brandishing the dispatch beside his head. “I’m sorry, gentlemen, you now know as much as I do. Nigel, I’ll rejoin you shortly. Duncan and the king will want to know about this.”

  He could not readily find Duncan. And
Kelson was, at the moment, occupied with matters far more trying, if less urgent, than what had just transpired in the council chamber. After leaving the war council, Kelson had gone, as he had said he would, to search out the apartments of Bran Coris’s wife, the Countess Richenda. He had finally located her quarters on an upper floor of the east wing, but it had taken what seemed like an eternity for the lady’s servants to rouse their mistress from her sleep.

  Kelson waited uneasily in the apartment’s dayroom while a few sleepy servants tidied the place and brought in a rack of candles on a floor standard. White moonlight streamed through an open eastern window, creating an eerie, ghostly atmosphere that made Kelson even more uncomfortable than he had been.

  At last the door to an inner chamber opened and the lady appeared. Even then, Kelson was not prepared for the young, reed-slim figure in white who glided into the room and made her graceful curtsy.

  Beauty he had been prepared for, knowing Bran Coris; and Richenda of Marley had that in abundance, though of a less earthy sort than Kelson had envisioned. The delicate, heart-shaped face was framed by masses of reddish-gold hair bound with a white lace kerchief; the eyes were of a deep, sea-blue shade that Kelson had never seen before. In addition, though he knew that she was Bran Coris’s wife and the mother of his young heir, he found it difficult to remember that she was probably a dozen years his senior, not a maiden barely out of girlhood.

  But her attire was very austere for one so young: stark white on white, unadorned but for the pattern of the fabric itself, almost as though she had known, before entering the room, of the dreadful news the young king brought. After the servants had been dismissed, she listened calmly as Kelson told of her husband’s treachery, her expression hardly changing. When he had finished, she turned away and stared out the window for a long time: a slim shadow of white and gold in the brilliant moonlight.

  “Shall I call one of your maidservants, my lady?” Kelson asked in a low voice, concerned that she might faint or become hysterical, as he had heard that noble ladies sometimes were wont to do.

  Richenda bowed her head and shook it slowly, pulling the lace kerchief from her long, red-golden hair and letting it fall to the floor. A gold ring set with a heavy seal—her husband’s betrothal ring—winked on her left hand as she ran her hands along the stone window-ledge, and Kelson thought he saw something wet mark the stone sill for just an instant.

  But the hands quickly covered the teardrop, if such it had been. Nor did the slim fingers tremble as she gazed down at them, unseeing. Richenda of Marley was a daughter of the nobility, bred to dignity and stoic acceptance of her lot in the general order of things. She reminded Kelson a little of his mother.

  “I am truly sorry, my lady,” Kelson finally said, wishing there was something else he could say to ease her pain. “If—if it will make your sorrow any easier to bear, be assured that I will not hold your husband’s treachery against you or your son. You shall have my personal protection for as long as—”

  There was a curt, staccato knock at the door, followed immediately by Morgan’s low-voiced, “Kelson?”

  Kelson turned expectantly at the sound of his name and moved toward the door, not noticing the effect the voice had had on the woman at the window. As Morgan entered, Richenda’s face went pale and the fingers of one hand clenched on the sill of the moonlit window. Morgan made a perfunctory bow in her direction but did not really see her, so absorbed was he in delivering his message to the king. As he and Kelson met, the woman watched in amazement, as though unable to believe what her eyes and ears perceived.

  “Forgive the interruption, my prince,” Morgan murmured, lowering his head to point out the signature as Kelson tilted the page toward the light. “I knew you would wish to see this at once. Duke Jared is captured but alive, at last report. General Gloddruth and a few others managed to escape. The council has been apprised.”

  “Gloddruth!” Kelson breathed, moving toward the rack of candles and reading eagerly. “And Burchard, too! My lady, you will pardon me, this is important news.”

  At his words, Morgan glanced up as though just remembering that there was a third person in the room, then met the woman’s wide blue eyes and nearly recoiled. For just an instant, his memory flashed back to the previous spring, to the road by Saint Torin’s, to a mired coach bound for Dhassa and a lady with hair the color of flame in sunlight; again, to a woman and child seen leaving vespers at the bishop’s chapel only last week. It was the same woman, the one he had almost asked Duncan about; the woman whose face had been graven on his memory since that first brief encounter on the Dhassa road.

  Who was she? And what was she doing here, in the chambers of the Countess of Marley?

  He took an involuntary step toward her, then drew up in confusion, hastily covering that confusion with a courtly bow. His pulse was pounding in his ears, and he could not seem to think clearly. It was all he could do, as he raised his eyes to hers, to simply murmur, “My lady.”

  The lady managed a shaky, hesitant attempt at a smile. “I perceive that it was not a simple hunter named Alain who rescued my coach that day at Saint Torin’s,” she said softly, her eyes as blue as the lakes of Rhendall.

  “M-my lady,” Morgan whispered, casting prudence to the winds and shaking his head in wonder. “Yours was the last face I remember before oblivion claimed me on that awful day. I have seen you only once since then, and you did not see me. But in my dreams…”

  His voice trailed off as he realized that he had no right to be saying these things, and the lady lowered her eyes and toyed with a fold of her gown.

  “Forgive me, my lord, but I know not how to call you,” she whispered plaintively.

  Kelson, finishing his dispatch, looked up with a start to see the two conversing and hurried back to join them.

  “My lady, you must forgive my ill manners. I forgot that you have not made the acquaintance of His Grace, the Duke of Corwyn. Morgan, this is Lady Richenda, wife to the Earl of Marley.”

  At Kelson’s allusion to the traitor, though he did not speak the name, Morgan’s stomach did a slow, queasy roll, and he had to force himself to remain outwardly calm, not to show his consternation.

  Of course, she had to be Bran’s wife. What else would she be doing in this room?

  Richenda of Marley…Bran Coris’s wife. What perverse quirk of fate could have brought them together on the Dhassa road only to forever part them here, within Dhassa walls? Richenda of Marley—God, how could he have been so imperceptive?

  He cleared his throat nervously and bowed again in acknowledgement, further masking his discomfiture with a slight cough.

  “Ah, the lady and I have already met, after a fashion, Sire. A few months ago, I helped free her ladyship’s coach from the mud outside Saint Torin’s. I was—ah—in disguise at the time. She could not have known who I was.”

  “Nor he, I,” Richenda murmured, lifting her chin bravely but not meeting Morgan’s eyes.

  “Oh,” said Kelson. His glance flicked from one to the other, trying to read the meaning of Morgan’s odd reaction more plainly, but then he gave it up with a bright smile.

  “Well, I am pleased to hear that you were being chivalrous even in disguise, Morgan. My lady, if you will pardon us, we must take our leave of you now. My Lord Alaric and I have other duties that require our attention. Besides, I imagine that you will wish to be alone for a while now. Please do not hesitate to call on me, if I may be of any assistance.”

  “You are very kind, Sire,” Richenda murmured, dropping a deep curtsy and lowering her eyes once more.

  “Ah—yes. Morgan, shall we go?”

  “As you will, my prince.”

  “A moment, Sire.”

  Kelson turned to find the lady staring at him hopefully.

  “Is there something else, my lady?”

  Taking a deep breath, Richenda moved a few steps closer to him, her hands clasped nervously at her waist, then sank to her knees before him and bowed her head. Kelson gl
anced at Morgan in astonishment and question.

  “Sire, grant me a boon, I beseech you.”

  “A—a boon, my lady?”

  Richenda raised her eyes to meet Kelson’s. “Yes, Sire. Permit me to go with you to Cardosa. Perhaps I can talk to Bran, persuade him to give up this folly—if not for me, then for our son.”

  “Go with us to Cardosa?” Kelson echoed, casting Morgan a frantic plea for help. “My lady, that is not possible. An army is—no place for a woman of gentle birth. Nor would I expose you to the dangers of battle, even were suitable accommodations available. We are going to war, my lady!”

  Richenda lowered her eyes but made no attempt to get to her feet. “I am aware of the problems, Sire, and I am willing to endure a few hardships. It is the only way that I can attempt to atone for my husband’s treason. Please, do not deny me, Sire.”

  Kelson glanced at Morgan again for guidance, but the general would not look at him, was staring absorbedly at the parquet floor beneath his boots. For just an instant, Kelson had the fleeting, inexplicable impression that Morgan wanted him to acquiesce, though Morgan certainly had said nothing to indicate it. Kelson looked at Richenda again, kneeling quietly before him, then reached out his hands to take hers and raise her up. He would make one final attempt to dissuade her.

  “My lady, you cannot know what you ask. It would not be seemly. For you to travel unchaperoned with an army…”

  “I could travel under the protection of Bishop Cardiel,” she said earnestly. “Perhaps you were not aware of it, Sire, but Cardiel is my mother’s uncle. Under the circumstances, I think he would not object.”

  “He is a fool, then,” Kelson murmured. He glanced aside, briefly considering, then up at the lady’s face with a resigned expression.

  “Morgan, have you any major objections?”

  “Only the usual ones, my prince,” Morgan said quietly, not meeting his eyes. “And the lady seems to have dispensed with those.”

  Kelson sighed and then nodded. “Very well, my lady, I give you my leave to go, on the condition that Bishop Cardiel will consent. We leave at first light, but a few hours from now. Can you be ready?”