Alicia Roque Ruggieri

by The House of Mercy

  “Aye.” She hesitated, then leaned forward earnestly. “I tell you this, Deoradhan, because my father may… may be part of the growing conspiracy. And because he trusts you, he may ask you to take part. He may ask for your help in overthrowing the king.”

  “I bear no fondness for Arthur.”

  She had not expected that response. He could tell from her widened eyes. “But, surely, Deoradhan, by right of his kingship alone… He’s been placed there by God.”

  “I am not overly fond of your God either, Fiona, as you well ken,” he replied. “Thus, I give little heed to His supposed wishes regarding who should rule as tyrant over the Britons.” Deoradhan stood, eager to see what Weylin wanted with him. “I will act according to my own benefit, my lady, as your father has done to me.”

  “Then how are you any different from him, my lord?” the young woman asked, coming around the table to him. “You are the same kind of man.”

  His hand rose to strike her. She didn’t flinch, and the pity in her eyes weakened him. Deoradhan’s hand dropped back to his side. Robbed of his fury, humiliated that he would have hit her, he could only turn his bitter soul toward the door without another word. His dying conscience told him what his mind denied:

  She is right.

  28

  Camelot

  503 A.D.

  The late March wind cut Tarian across the face. Folding her arms tightly around her, she turned her feet back toward the main hall. Lord, please get me back home soon, back to Deirdre, back to Oxfield.

  She tired of the endless revelries and outings that her ladyship planned and executed with equally eternal enthusiasm. But Drustan had insisted that they remain through the winter at Camelot. “Great changes may be ahead,” he intoned, “and great opportunities for a flexible man.”

  You are so flexible, Drustan, that one day, you may never regain your proper shape at all.

  As Tarian stepped up the stair into the back corridor, she collided with a dark-cloaked figure. She staggered backwards, and the person caught her by the arm, his hood falling away from his face. His face was only inches away from hers when she regained her balance.

  “I’m sorry, my lady. I didn’t see you.”

  She recognized that face, though she hadn’t seen it for months. “Deoradhan,” she greeted. “I didn’t know you had come to Camelot.”

  The auburn-haired former messenger looked at her uneasily as he pulled up his heavy hood. “Aye, my lady, I’ve just arrived.” He paused, then spoke low. “Tell me, my lady, is Lord Drustan about?”

  Why was he acting so secretive? “Aye, he’s here. Did you want to speak with him?”

  Deoradhan gave a vigorous shake of his head. “Nay. Nay, but will you impart a favor to me, my lady?”

  “What is it?”

  “Do not tell my lord that I’m here.”

  “Alright, if you wish.”

  His eyes stared into hers. “Promise me that you will not tell anyone that you saw me, my lady.”

  “Alright, I promise. But why?”

  Deoradhan hesitated. “I just need it to be so for now, my lady. Please?”

  “I’ve already given my word, Deoradhan.”

  “Thank you, my lady.” With a kiss to her hand, the young man rushed past her.

  What was that all about? Fear crept around her heart. I hope I didn’t promise something I will regret.

  Summer Country

  He saw her everywhere he looked. Every dry leaf on the ground, every birdsong in the frosty evening sky murmured Cairine’s presence. Calum had not meant to come this way at all. But the past drew him back straight to where he had not wanted to tread.

  His beard had grown, covering his smooth, scarred cheeks with golden brown fleece. It had given Calum additional protection from the cold, which struck at him continually throughout the long winter, despite his heavy fur cloak and woolen trousers. Yet his spiritual misery was so acute, the elemental sufferings held little annoyance for him.

  Do I dare enter the village? Do I walk the same roads, see the same faces? They would not recognize him. It had been nearly eighteen years since he had last moved through the hamlet he now approached. Eighteen years since he had seen mother or father, brothers or sisters.

  His feet trembled in their leather boots as the small gathering of cottages came into sight. Frozen fields stretched out as far as he could see on either side. Just as I remember it. But I can’t go back in time. I can never take back what happened.

  Camelot

  Deoradhan ducked into a recess in the corridor. He had not expected to meet with Lady Tarian here. Usually, the lord of Oxfield and his household arrived just in time for the Feast of the Nativity and stayed for only a month or so. Never into March.

  He smiled without joy. March was a historical month for assassinations. “And you, too, my son?” he murmured aloud, realizing how well Julius’ words fit his own actions. That first Brutus was a patriot, too.

  I was as a son to Arthur and now I am to be his demise? A soft-bladed knife?

  He shook his head. Arthur has done much to destroy me. He deserves no less than what I am prepared to do.

  But am I prepared to do it? He closed his eyes and pictured himself creeping up behind the heavily-sleeping king, plunging his dagger between the Pendragon’s ribs. The job would require more than one thrust. Again and again the knife must do its work. The blood would splurt and pump from the gouges in the king’s flesh. Will he die quickly, or like most men, will he awaken and perish knowing that I betrayed him?

  And why was Drustan still here? Did he suspect…? The whole court whispered with supposed scheming. A man could not reign for two decades without developing a few enemies. But the king little surmises how far the frustrations with his rule have run, thought Deoradhan as he turned his feet back into the dimly-lit corridor.

  Never mind the emotional pull of childhood attachments. First Arthur must go; then Weylin would follow. And his way would be clear to take back what belonged to him rightfully. He had business to do tonight.

  No one must ever know I’ve come.

  Oxfield

  “When do you expect Garan will come fetch you?”

  Bethan looked up from plucking the feathers from the chickens laid out on the table. She met Deirdre’s eyes with a smile and shrugged. “I don’t know exactly when.”

  “Possibly within the month?”

  “I can hope.” Bethan picked up a sharp knife and slid it across the fowl, the edge pulling out the quill remnants.

  “True.” Deirdre gave a sigh. “Sometimes, ‘tis hard to hope, though, I admit. Life seems quiet here now that everyone is gone…Meghyn, now Calum, and Lady Tarian.”

  “Is she really a believer, Deirdre?”

  “Aye, she is, but I think sometime ‘tis harder to count the costs when you come into privilege, you ken. For years, she fell away from the way.” Deirdre smiled. “Finally, she came to realize again that only Christ could satisfy her.”

  Only Christ… Does He alone satisfy me? Or do I follow Him because my Papa did? Bethan batted the thought around in her mind. Wasn’t she prepared to give her life as a missionary to the heathen north with Garan, especially now that Papa had never returned?

  But the idea continued to skulk into her thoughts. Do I love Christ or only the things He gives me? Would I be content with Him alone?

  Bethan was not foolish enough to ignore the query completely. She didn’t pray about it; she didn’t dare to. But she allowed it a little room.

  Summer Country

  The dawn stained the sky with deep winter pink mingling with orange. Calum crunched through the remnants of the last snow, his boots breaking through the fragile ice coating. The wheel tracks in the road had frozen still, like miniature red sea partings. Nearby, possibly from the clustered evergreens growing close to the lane, Calum heard a strange bird call, melodic and gurgling with joyful expectation.

  His eyes fixed on the thatched roofs ahead of him, Calum placed one heavy fo
ot in front of the other. There, that first building housed the knife-sharpener. How well he remembered watching the man’s skillful fingers work, bringing each blade to razor-sharpness. Aye, and there was the drinking-house, where his own father spent many hours after plowing. Here, on the right…

  Calum shuddered. The druid priest’s home. How strange, though. Usually, few visitors wanted to step into that abode. Yet as he approached it this morning, a dozen people flocked around its open door, despite the early hour. Puzzled, Calum paused a few feet away.

  “Greetings, laddie,” a man called out from the doorway. His face wore a graying red beard lit by a nearly toothless grin. “Are you coming to meeting? ‘Tis the Lord’s Day, after all.”

  ‘Twas Sunday, Calum realized. I must play the part of a stranger. “And is this where the Lord’s people meet, man?” he said, mustering most of his strength to appear happy. As a good Christian should be.

  “Aye, ‘tis. And are you one of us?”

  “I am.” Calum strode forward toward the low doorway. That my shaking limbs would not betray me. Why do they meet here, of all places? He must not live here any longer.

  The man grasped Calum by the forearm and then pulled him into a hearty hug. “Welcome, friend,” he said. “Come inside. We’re about ready to begin.”

  Inside, more than twenty people of various ages sat clustered on the fur rugs and perched on long hewn benches. A few younger men stood, leaning against the walls, some cradling children in their arms. Calum recognized one among them almost immediately.

  ‘Twas Kieve. My younger brother. He had been but ten years old when Calum had left the village. Now he must be…Calum calculated his age. Twenty-eight. And was that his little son that he held in his arms? The toddler was the very image of his father.

  Kieve’s glance rested for a moment upon the stranger, and Calum turned his face away, not wishing to be recognized or acknowledged. He took a seat beside the man who had welcomed him inside.

  “So who leads the mass?” he asked in a low voice.

  “The priest does,” replied the man. “Or his son sometimes now that the priest is so old. Here he is.”

  Calum shifted his eyes to an interior doorway, leading to the other room of the house. A man in his forties stepped through the humble archway. Gray wove through his black beard and hair, and the wrinkles around his eyes and mouth ran deep. Almost two full decades had passed, but Calum knew who this was.

  Heddwyn. Calum remembered the man as a cocky twenty-something-year-old, bent on avoiding responsibilities and enjoying pleasure. As a boy, he had thought the young man could not be any more full of himself without bursting like an overripe Roman grape.

  “Greetings in the name of our Lord,” Heddwyn murmured, coming to the front of the room. Peace illuminated his countenance.

  Calum had never felt so perplexed. How had everything changed from black to white, from ugly to beautiful in the years since he fled? What had happened in this village where Cairine had been put to her gruesome death? Aye, under the eyes of this very man, through the power of his father?

  Through all the singing, the scripture recitation, the sermons, Calum sat and stood, stood and sat, participating as if through a dream-self. All around him, he recognized those whom he knew as opposed to the gospel when the preacher had come through the village all those years ago. Yet, here they worshipped the Lord with willing tongues and joyful hearts.

  What happened?

  29

  Camelot

  “Nia, where is my shawl? You know, the orange silk one.” Tarian rustled through the messy trunk. “I must find the time to organize this. Before we leave for home,” she added, smiling up at the middle-aged maidservant.

  “I believe you left that shawl in my lord’s chamber, my lady. I saw it there when I went in to make the bed this morning,” replied the woman, kneeling to help Tarian neaten the trunk’s contents.

  “Don’t worry about this, Nia. I’ll see to it. Just fetch my shawl if you would. I wish to wear it to supper tonight. The queen wants all of her ladies to match, and—”

  “And orange is her favorite color right now, aye?” the servant grinned. “Alright, my lady. I’ll get your shawl.”

  Nia left the room, and Tarian continued with dressing for supper. This constant bustle and excitement gladdened me when we first came, but I sicken of it now, especially with this child coming. She dropped a hand to her waist, not noticeably thickened yet. I must tell Drustan when we arrive back at Oxfield. Spring was nearly upon them. Surely Drustan would wish to be home for the rest of the lambing season. Unless something more important loomed politically for him.

  Poor Arthur. Sleep appeared to have forsaken him and worry to dog his heels. Gwynhwyfar half-loved and half-loathed him. Men hounded him for his attention to their petty problems while denying him the authority he needed to accomplish anything of value. Not an empty-pated woman, Tarian had observed these things while at the queen’s side each day.

  She looked up when the door opened. ‘Twas Nia, without the shawl.

  “It wasn’t there? I wonder where it could be,” said Tarian.

  The maidservant didn’t move from her place near the half-open door. Tarian glanced at her again and found the woman’s face filling with anxiety. “What is it, Nia?”

  Nia bit her lip. “I…That is, I wasn’t able to look for it in my lord’s chamber, my lady.”

  “Why not, Nia?” questioned Tarian. Drustan usually walked the archery fields at this hour of the day.

  “I…It was occupied, my lady.”

  “Occupied? What do you mean, Nia?” The maid’s voice held such strange fear that Tarian let the sash fall from her waist untied.

  Tarian headed for the doorway, but the maid grasped her arm. “My lady…”

  Tarian pulled away from the woman’s hand. “Nay, Nia. If there is someone in my lord’s chamber, I must see who ‘tis.”

  As her feet moved down the stone corridor, she felt she did not wish to know what in Drustan’s room had made her servant upset. Yet something else compelled her to look anyway, to put to rest Drustan’s secrecy and know this man beneath his smooth surface. The incident last autumn in the stables came to her mind, and her spirit shrank away.

  It would be easy to just walk away. Go back to your chamber and forget about the shawl.

  Tarian stood before the door and placed her hand on the latch. Pausing for just a moment to take a breath, she heard it.

  Giggling. Whispering.

  Her stomach turned. She forced her hand to lift the latch. It was unlocked. Pushing it open on its silent hinges, Tarian stumbled into the antechamber, lit by several wall torches. On the desk across from the doorway, Drustan’s writing implements and parchments stood, just as they had last evening when she had left this room.

  Unblinking, Tarian moved to the open archway connecting the rooms. The smell of expensive perfume met her senses as the sight of Lady Seren, dressed only as Nature could dress a woman, met her eyes. Her only artificial ornament, an orange shawl draped over her hair.

  Drustan stood from where he reclined when he saw her. “Well,” he stated, iron in his voice. Lady Seren stepped toward him, and she stared at Tarian, chin raised, as if she had the right to be where she was.

  Tarian was aware of the silence, waiting on her reaction. Gathering her courage, she walked forward until she stood before the two. Without looking at the woman, she plucked the orange shawl from her head. Her eyes met Drustan’s.

  “I was looking for my wrap,” she stated. “You left the door unlocked.”

  He raised a derisive eyebrow. Numbly, Tarian turned and exited the room, waiting to run until she could be certain her footsteps would not be heard by her husband and his lover.

  Summer Country

  The priest’s son invited the newcomer for supper.

  “A homely affair ‘twill be,” admitted the man, “but as the Scripture says, better a dinner of herbs.”

  The man’s wife, also a ho
mely affair made beautiful by love, served her husband, their six children, and Calum a meal of bread and thick hare stew. Delicious though he knew ‘twas, Calum hardly could eat it. Too many thoughts and emotions mixed in his mind and heart.

  “My father can’t join us this evening. His old bones are racked with arthritis.” Heddwyn informed Calum, who felt profound relief but tried not to show it.

  His host dipped into the stew with a scrap of bread. “Tell me, do you come from these parts?”

  “Aye, from nearby. But I haven’t been back since I was a youth,” answered Calum.

  “And do you find things much changed?” smiled the man.

  “Aye, I do.” Calum paused. “When I was a boy, ‘twas pagan country. Now I see only hints of the old religion. Why is that? What happened to cause it, if I might ask?”

  “You may, and I’ll tell you what I know of it,” answered the priest. “My short answer is: the Holy Spirit came down upon it.”

  “And the long answer?”

  “When God’s Spirit comes and breathes new life into dead bones, lad, ‘tis difficult sometimes to trace His ways. But I believe it goes back to when we made a human sacrifice nearly twenty years ago, when my father was a leading druid here.”

  Calum drew a breath. “Aye?”

  Heddwyn leaned back. “The victim was one of a few new converts to Christ, and the most persistent in the faith. My father despised her for her decision. He said ‘twould be an end to the old ways, that the fields would die, that the rivers would run dry. And you ken, they did for awhile. So, the village leaders decided to offer the gods a sacrifice. And this girl was offered. She went willingly, without any resistance. I was a young man of twenty-seven or so at the time, and I can remember her eyes brimming with forgiveness and compassion for us as she died.”

  The man stopped for several moments. Calum finally prodded him on. “And so?”

  “I was plagued with strange visions after her death. Distraught because even my father couldn’t work an incantation against them, I went to a monastery for help. A last resort, believe me,” added Heddwyn, smiling at Calum. “I lived among the brothers for a time, and they prayed over me, and now I know, for me. The visions faded, and how can I explain it? I felt my heart awaken as if it had never beaten before. I suddenly knew that Jesus was the Son of God, that the gods of my fathers were only stone and wood. I knew ‘twas Jesus who had given me the visions and He who had taken them away. I repented and fled to Him for mercy. And He gave it to me richly.”