Alicia Roque Ruggieri

by The House of Mercy

With an easy movement, Calum tossed the sack to his assistant. Marcus caught it, staggering a little. “Heavy,” he commented.

  “Aye, ‘tis,” Calum smiled, knowing the sack weighed nearly half as much as the youth did. “But the sand will get the rust off that mail. ‘Twill be good as ever. Throw it back,” he instructed. The young man obeyed, heaving the bag across the short expanse.

  “Good,” Calum praised. Marcus smiled back, pleased, and readied himself again.

  The boy’s always on his guard, always prepared. It does my heart good to see that in him, for he’ll need it if he’s ever to take over for me. Marcus did not yet know of Calum’s plan; none did, save the potter Bricius. No one else need know for a while. He would bide his time, waiting until an acceptable day arrived, when he would be at liberty to pursue his heart’s desire. For now, he would work while he waited, prompt in doing what came to his hand to accomplish, whether ‘twas cleaning rusty mail or sweeping out the guardhouse.

  “Step back a pace or so, Marcus,” he said aloud. “This is too easy for you. We’ll stretch your abilities today.”

  ~ ~ ~

  Kick. Throw. Dip and smooth. Throw. Kick. The repetitive motions harmonized with the potter’s muttered song:

  “Be thou solely chief love of my heart,

  Let there be none other, O High King of heaven.”

  And there was none other. At one time, he could not have sung the hymn with an easy conscience. But now Bricius sang with a heart unfettered by possession of people or things or knowledge. A heart at liberty to love as infinitely as any mortal could and yet never be owned by his passions.

  Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven… And what was that kingdom but Love eternally, pulsing from the Creator’s heart through the Redeemer’s cross, paving the way to the throne of grace? How long Bricius had taken to learn such an easy lesson! How many never learned that the way to the Father’s knee ran through His heart, not through His head!

  The potter continued his movements, now as natural to him as any instinct, barely noticing when a shadow fell across the floor from the doorway.

  “I’ll be with you in a moment,” he said, hands adding the last smoothing strokes to the pot. ‘Twas a fine one, this, with thin walls and a slim neck, like the ones his great-grandfather had made in the days of the Romans. With a satisfied sigh, Bricius rose from his pottery wheel and turned to greet his guest.

  To his surprise, Lady Tarian waited just inside the doorway. “Good afternoon, Bricius,” she said, and the potter thought he heard a note of fearful courage in this woman’s voice.

  “Good afternoon, my lady.” Bricius bowed and then waited for her to explain the reason for her visit.

  Instead, she moved gracefully a few feet inside the workshop, her eyes intent on the pot on which he had been working. “You do fine work, Bricius. This is a lovely.”

  “Thank you, my lady. I’m honored that you think it so.”

  The noblewoman turned from the pottery wheel and met Bricius’ gaze. “I have heard that you conduct mass outdoors each Sunday.”

  “Aye, my lady, I lead the worship.”

  “And what qualifies you to do this? Are you trained as a priest?”

  Bricius smiled. “I lived as a monk for many years, my lady, and studied the Scriptures and the writings of holy men.” He paused before gently continuing. “But as for what qualifies me, ‘tis what qualifies any man or woman for the work to which he has been called. As the seer declares, ‘I was no prophet, nor a prophet’s son, but I was a herdsman and a dresser of sycamore figs. But the LORD took me from following the flock.’”

  The young woman remained silent momentarily, then turned her imperturbable eyes to the potter. “I would like to join you at your mass,” she stated. “This Sunday.”

  “We would be glad to have you, my lady. We meet at the ancient oak at the meadow’s edge. I could have someone lead you.”

  “That will be unnecessary, thank you. At dawn?”

  “Aye.”

  Bricius watched as the lady moved to the door. At the archway, she turned. “Thank you, Bricius. I shall look forward to this.” With that, she stepped out, leaving the potter to scratch his beard in amazement.

  10

  Oxfield

  Deoradhan’s every sense informed him of the tiniest nuances in his surroundings. Around him, the once-verdant oaks and elms had shed their leaves, baring shivering trunks to the deep autumn wind, unmasking the forest. Alasdair’s hooves moved with a muffled thud across the smooth, well-worn path, their sound combining with that of insects and soft bird calls. Deoradhan sniffed, and the scent of past winters’ decaying leaves filled his nostrils, combining with the familiar smell of horse sweat and warm leather. He could taste the pungent odors with his tongue, nearly. His bridle reins fit smoothly, securely in his fingers, and he moved in unison with his horse as they traveled down the path.

  He felt at home here in the woodland, as at peace as he had ever felt. Here, no mocking voice incorrectly called him the illegitimate spawn of the high king, intending to insult the Pendragon but injuring Deoradhan deeply. Or rather inflaming the wound that already cankered in his heart.

  I believed their lies. And then his. Hardly blinking, letting Alasdair guide him down the shadowy path, Deoradhan permitted his thoughts to wander unrestrained into the forest of his past…

  The little boy felt afraid. The bright torches shining from the wall combined with the rich tapestries and heavy laughter, overwhelming him like a towering ocean wave. He wanted his papa to come and reach for him, pick him up in his great, strong arms and protect him. Mama should come, too, with her loving hands and laughing smile. Why had Mama given him away to papa’s warrior? The lad had cried for her to hold him, but she hadn’t listened to him! Fire had burned all around him. Fire was a friend, wasn’t it? To keep him warm and safe from wild beasts?

  Where was he? Who were these frightful Big People, wearing strange clothing and speaking stranger words? At least, Papa’s warrior stayed with him, gripping him in his mighty arms. With all the strength in his chubby fingers, the child clung to the man’s forearms.

  But wait. The warrior carried him forward toward a great chair, carved with the heads of animals and covered with furs. A man sat in the chair. He was a young Big Person, not as old as Papa, with a beard that matched his yellow hair. The man wore gold things on his head and fingers and around his neck.

  “Come here, little one,” he spoke and smiled. When the toddler saw the smile, he didn’t feel as afraid; the man seemed so kind and gentle. Like Papa.

  Deoradhan shook his head defiantly. He would allow no tender thoughts to cloud his attitude toward Arthur. Purposely, he turned to another, more painful memory.

  He had always disliked the boy. Now he had a reason and a good one at that. In disbelief, Deoradhan stared at his wrestling partner Modred and wondered if the lad had made his comment only to distract him from glorying in his victory minutes earlier.

  “What did you say?” Deoradhan barely forced the question out of his eleven-year-old lips.

  His swarthy countenance patient, Modred repeated his remark. “I said that you inherited our father’s brute strength. I fear I rather take after my mother in that respect.” With a graceful shrug, the slim youth, older than Deoradhan by three or four years, turned and began the stroll from the training grounds back to the fortress walls.

  In two bounds, Deoradhan sprang in front of his companion. “Stay,” he commanded, grasping Modred’s slender shoulders. “What do you mean by ‘our father’? Of whom do you speak?” His heart pounded in his chest as with vigorous exercise. “Your father is unknown. You grew up with your half-brothers in Orkney; you came here to train under your uncle, the high king.”

  Modred shook his shoulders free. “Others may be ignorant of who fathered me, but I am not. And he is your father as well.”

  At Deoradhan’s look of complete confusion, Modred smiled, showing beautiful white teeth. �
��Arthur, you fool. I thought you knew.”

  Deoradhan could barely breathe. “Arthur? Are you sure?” he finally choked out.

  Modred sneered. “Am I sure? Is the sky blue?” He resumed walking, and Deoradhan woodenly matched Modred’s elegant prowl. “My mother, Lady Morgana, told me this. She is a druidess and is never wrong.”

  “She knows about me, too?” Deoradhan could barely believe it. He had never known who he was or whither he had come, except for a few shadowy memories that elusively haunted him. Infrequently, the lad had dreamed of finding his parents to be high-born British Romans or even Irish royalty, who had perhaps set him afloat across the Irish sea to save him from some horrible doom. Like Moses, of whom the Christian priests spoke. Never had he really believed ‘twas the high king who had sired him, albeit illegitimately. Pride and shame coursed through every fiber of his lanky body.

  “No, my mother only told me about myself. I assumed that of you. Think about it, though: your story fits the mold.” Modred directed his serene blue eyes to Deoradhan’s troubled ones and waited for a response.

  An unknown birth. An upbringing at court fit for a prince’s son. The tutoring, the training, the numerous gifts from Arthur. So much that had gone unexplained now made sense.

  Deoradhan nodded. “I believe you,” he said to the young man whom he knew to be his half-brother. “I must go speak with the king.”

  And he had spoken with Pendragon. Deoradhan gritted his teeth, remembering. Arthur had denied the charge, gently, as a man might break the neck of a favorite bird.

  The boy charged into the Great Hall, his chest nearly exploding with conflicting emotions, too weighty for such a youngster to understand or name. His bare feet slapped the brown stones, stinging, as he ran toward the dais, the raised area where the king’s throne resided. The cavernous room was vacant, though, except for the few feathery residents in the heavy-beamed ceiling, who greeted Deoradhan with surprised twitters and flutters.

  Seeing no one, he slowed, his enthusiasm draining. The boy dropped onto one of the hall’s long benches to catch his breath. He could hear female singing from outside, the sweet sounds wafting through the windows, mingling with the cool spring breeze. Without looking, he knew the impulsive young queen must have taken her women outside to sew. He could picture them dappling the grass with their skirts of imported dyed fabric, their laughing smiles glowing beneath locks of chestnut, flax, and truffle.

  He swung his legs slowly back and forth. His feet just brushed the floor; at eleven, he could not boast of tall stature like the fierce warrior Gawaine, whom he admired from afar, barely daring to greet the man when he passed him in the yard. Deoradhan’s frame promised a more moderate height with a sturdiness that would have spoken of Saxon ancestry, were it not for his rich auburn hair, the color of damp autumn leaves, and his Celtic blue-green eyes. In a way, he felt glad for these obvious traits, for they showed him to be a true Briton, whose roots grew from deep within this loamy soil, not a transplant from other lands. How deep, even he did not know at the time.

  Deoradhan breathed the fresh air appreciatively, letting his gaze wander over the long empty tables and benches that filled the hall, toward the dais, until at last they rested with surprise on a lone figure standing silently looking out one of the windows. The sunlight reflected off the man’s circlet and long, wavy hair, illuminating the gold of them both before it washed over his straight shoulders and fell to the floor, puddling around his leather-encased feet. He leaned upon a crutch; Deoradhan knew this supported the leg he had injured in the last eastern skirmish against the persistent Saxons.

  Heart in his throat, Deoradhan approached the king. At that young age, he did not know yet how to make small-talk before broaching a turbulent subject. Hesitant and eager at once, the boy waited until he was within arm’s reach of the dignified man. Then in his childish soprano, he whispered. “Father?”

  Arthur froze. He turned slowly, and Deoradhan felt alarm at the relief and confusion written across the king’s kind face. Finally, the older man spoke. “No, I’m not your father, lad.”

  Hurt ripped into Deoradhan’s chest like a northern dagger. “But Modred—”

  The king cut in gently. “Don’t always listen to Modred. His words are elegant, but like a sinuous adder. he is not to be trusted.”

  “But—”

  Arthur took Deoradhan’s small hand in his, and Deoradhan felt how callused and powerful the king’s fingers were, how well they must wield the battle-axe and sword. With a hand to the lad’s shoulder, Arthur guided him to sit beside him on one of the long benches of the hall. He was silent for long moments, then turned to the vulnerable Deoradhan, smiling compassionately. “You are an orphan, Deoradhan. Your father was one of my best companions, a valiant man. But he is dead now, and so is your mother.” He sighed. “I can honor your father most through caring for you as I would my own.”

  Deoradhan nodded slowly, feeling a bit bereft but relieved as well. Honorable though ‘twould be to have the high king for a sire, no boy wished to be illegitimate, without inheriting his father’s name or the respect of his fellow countrymen. He opened his mouth to ask the king more about his parents, but Arthur laid a hand on Deoradhan’s shoulder.

  “Sometimes ‘tis best to let the past lie quietly, lad,” he stated in his soft, steady voice. “See if you can’t get in some more practicing with the sword before the sun sets.”

  And he had secured more practicing with his sword, and with his spear, arrows, and in wrestling as well. Now, more than eight years after that conversation, Deoradhan could feel his own strength as he rode through the wood. He was a warrior, truly, but without a liege-lord, just as he was a prince without a kingdom to call his own. A scholar as well, thanks to the education Arthur had provided both at his own court and in Gaul. Deoradhan wryly smiled, thinking of how eagerly the king had sent him away to study once Deoradhan learned the truth.

  Like an unexpected summer rainstorm, the stranger cantered through the Pendragon’s gates at sundown. He gave his horse, a heavy-boned mare lathered with sweat, to a stableboy’s care and moved up the stone steps of the hall with surety of purpose written across his countenance. His clothes showed the dust of travel but were sewn finely. Over his tunic, he wore a polished coat of well-cared-for mail, and an ornamental belt held a well-forged sword to his waist.

  Deoradhan and two other boys had been playing a game with knucklebones on the steps of the hall when the stranger’s footsteps sounded on the stones. They had heard him ride up but had not paid attention. Many warriors came and went frequently through the gates of Camelot. Only when the newcomer’s path to the door disturbed their game did the boys notice his presence.

  “Who is that?” Percivale, a scrawny lad of twelve, wondered aloud as the man strode up the steps toward the hall doors. “He’s a champion for sure. Look at his belt.”

  “A gift from his liege for valor, ‘tis certain,” Alwyn remarked with confidence, his serious brown eyes trained on the stranger’s back as the man spoke with the guards at the door.

  Deoradhan remained quiet. The warrior seemed familiar to him somehow, like someone he had met in a dream or the dream of a dream. As the guards permitted the man to enter the hall, Deoradhan rose to his feet.

  “Where are you going? The game’s not finished,” Percivale said.

  “I want to know who that man is,” Deoradhan answered, clambering up the steps on his skinny thirteen-year-old legs.

  Alwyn leapt to his feet, nimble as a fay. “I’m coming, too.”

  “Nobody wants to finish the game?” Percivale asked, disappointment in his pallid face. When neither Deoradhan nor Alwyn sat back down, Percivale stood. “Alright. I may as well come, too. Who knows, the stranger might have a good story to tell.”

  Deoradhan and Alywn smiled at him and ran up the steps, into the hall, the knucklebones forgotten. The helmeted guards ignored the boys, used to their tireless activity, knowing that their innocent exuberance delighted the
childless high king. Indeed, Deoradhan and his fellows were welcome to roam wherever they wished, learning the ways of noble conduct from interaction with the lords and ladies who stopped in Britain’s principal citadel.

  The evening wall torches did not burn yet. With eyes accustomed to the brilliant afternoon sunlight, Deoradhan could barely discern the figure of the warrior standing before the king’s throne. He led the other two boys toward the front of the hall, more composed in Arthur’s presence but feeling curiosity prod him toward unusual boldness. Deoradhan moved around the stranger and knelt at the king’s feet. Immediately, he felt an affectionate hand rest upon his shoulder and glanced up to see the high king smiling at him. He grinned back, and then they both turned their attention to the sober warrior before them.

  “You say you’ve come from Ireland,” Arthur said.

  “Aye. I served the king there for ten years. But my heart has longed to come back to this island. Surely you can tell by my speech that I am no native to Ireland.”

  “Indeed,” Arthur paused and leaned forward. Deoradhan saw interest in the king’s keen blue eyes. “Your speech tells of a northern birth, rather. Perhaps in Lothian.”

  The stranger met the king’s eyes without flinching. “My lord has guessed it. Only Pict blood flowed through my mother’s veins (may the gods keep her). My father relocated to Lothian from Gore during the Saxon invasions.”

  “What brought you to Ireland, the home of your enemies?”

  “Many things. Let it suffice to say, I had fulfilled a duty from which there could be no return to Lothian.” The man gazed into the Pendragon’s eyes. “Surely, my lord, you know my countenance. This is not the first time I have stood in your presence. A decade ago, I brought a young child here, a princely refugee, for your protection.”

  Deoradhan felt the hand on his shoulder tense and then grip him. Startled, the boy looked up. The color drained out of Arthur’s sun-browned cheeks. “Boys,” he finally said, half in a whisper, “leave us.”