Childe Morgan (18 page)

“You mean, read my mind?”

“Yes.”

He inclined his head in agreement. “Do what is needful.”

Smiling, she slid her hands to either side of his face, thumbs resting lightly on his temples.

“Close your eyes and relax, dearest Kenneth,” she murmured.

 

T
HE
next morning was spent in domestic activities, Kenneth retiring to the stable yard with Llion and Jared and several of the other knights while Alyce occupied herself in the solar, settling before her loom and humming an ancient tune as her fingers slipped an ivory shuttle back and forth among the threads of warp and weft. In the garden below, she could hear children's voices, shrill and excited: Alaric playing with his two McLain cousins.

She glanced outside and smiled at the sight, savoring the late summer air with its scent of sunlight on grass, clean earth, and recent rain. Alaric had found the damp flowerbeds and the pond and was rapidly initiating the slightly younger Duncan into the joyous mysteries of mud. The seven-year-old Kevin was doing his best to remain aloof and clean, as befitted the ducal heir to Cassan, playing quietly with his toy knights on a patch of stone paving beside a more formal fountain, but it was apparent that his interest in the younger boys' mud was fast becoming more than academic.

No matter. The late-morning sun was warm after the chill of the previous night's rain. Melissa, Alyce's maid, and Bairbre, the maid who looked after Duncan and Kevin, would be less than pleased at having to bathe three squirming boys this evening, but it was the first real rain of the autumn; the summer had been dry. Not for months had the weather permitted such boyish pursuits. Alyce laughed aloud when she saw that Kevin had finally succumbed to temptation and was making mud moats and mottes and castles with as much gusto as either of the younger boys.

She heard a rustle behind her and turned to see Vera entering the room with Bairbre, her riding habit of earlier in the day exchanged for a gown of honey-brown the exact shade of her hair, which gave her grey-green eyes a tinge of the sea. While it was well-known that the two countesses were related by marriage, only the two of them knew that they were, in fact, twins, cunningly separated at birth by their Deryni parents so that the second-born Vera might be brought up secretly in a human family, without the Deryni stigma that had been Alyce's lot for all her life.

Now Vera was Countess of Kierney, by marriage to the widower Jared McLain, whose first countess had died giving him his eldest son and heir, who was playing in the castle yard with Alaric and Duncan. Not even Earl Jared knew that his second wife was full sister to Alyce de Corwyn, one of the last of the High Deryni heiresses.

“I wish you could have ridden with us, earlier,” Vera said, coming to embrace her. “I doubt your daughter would have approved, however.” She smiled as she glanced down at Alyce's rounded belly, then nodded dismissal to her maid. “Thank you, Bairbre. You may go now.”

As they drew apart, both of them laughing companionably, Alyce took one of Vera's hands and led her closer to the window.

“Vera, you really must look at this,” she said, her casual tone for the benefit of the retiring maid as she directed her sister's gaze toward the garden below. “I fear that my son has been an exceedingly poor influence on yours. Our maids will be appalled when they learn how dirty three noble children have managed to get in less than half an hour.”

Vera laughed and moved back into the room to perch on a stool where she could survey her sister's weaving. Alyce had been working on the background of a hunting scene showing Castle Culdi high on its hill, with a band of horsemen galloping across the fields in the foreground, bright banners flying. Somehow, she had managed to convey a sense of foggy mystery, as though the riders floated across an early-morning meadow. Vera ran an appreciative finger across the tightly woven threads as Alyce sat down beside her.

“How
ever
do you manage to get this effect?”

Alyce gave a mirthful chuckle and took up her shuttle again.

“We had a Kheldish weaver at my father's court when Marie and I were young,” she replied. “He was old and sick, even when we first met him, but he still could weave. Father had him tutor us. It seemed a safe enough skill to teach Deryni children.”

Vera glanced at the door, which the maid had closed behind her, then passed a hand between them and the door. The spell was not a potent one, but it would muffle their words beyond discernment by any unseen listener. Like Alyce, she had learned early to guard her secrets as though her life depended on it.

“Was the man Deryni?” she asked in a low voice.

Alyce shrugged. “I don't know. He never said, and I was too young to know to ask. But I realize now that much of what he taught me was the ancient cording lore. Of course, he couched it only in terms of the physical manipulations involved.” She smiled as she slipped back across the years in memory. “Our governess, poor, dull lady, thought it but an advanced weaving technique. She had no patience with learning it herself. Had she but known…”

“Praise God she did not!” Vera snorted. “But, could a human even learn the lore behind the cording?”

“I don't know that, either. It was only after he was long dead that I began to understand what he had taught me—and poor Marie never did manage to learn it. Now she is gone, and I dare not use it myself except to enhance my wifely pastimes, as you see here.” She indicated the tapestry with a sweep of her hand. “I sometimes wonder why we are given such training, if we may never use it.”

She fell silent at that, and Vera did not speak. In that instant they had passed from idle reminiscence to consideration of one of the greatest enigmas of their lives. After a moment, Alyce glanced at the doorway again, then scooted her stool closer to Vera's with a rasp of wood against stone.

“I've had a message from the king,” she said.

Vera looked at her sharply, apprehension stiffening her fair features.

“Oh?”

“'Tis nothing ill,” Alyce assured her, “other than the timing, perhaps. Sooner than I had hoped, but—” She kept her eyes on her weaving as she took up her shuttle again and continued.

“Before Alaric was born, Kenneth and I…made an agreement with the king that our son should serve his son. It was an easy enough promise then, and even while he was still an infant.

“But when we brought him to court for Prince Brion's coming of age this summer, the king informed us that he wishes Alaric to come to court as page to Prince Brion as soon as he reaches his tenth birthday—sooner, if anything should happen to me or to Kenneth.”

“Page to the prince!” Vera relaxed visibly and nodded. “But, that's welcome news—or, do you fear his reasons, that he simply wants Alaric nearby, where he can be watched more closely? After all, 'tis no secret what he is.”

Alyce shook her head again. “No, it is not that.” She drew a deep breath and let it out in an effort to relax, carefully setting aside her shuttle. “Vera, he intends that Alaric should be…bound to Prince Brion's service by magic, not just as page and future squire and knight, but to assist when the time comes for Brion to assume his father's full power.”

“He would trust a Deryni with this?” Vera breathed.

“It is only a Deryni who
can
do this,” Alyce said softly. “It is what Alaric was born to do.” She did not add that the king very nearly had been the boy's father. “Kenneth and I agreed to this, soon after I discovered I was with child. The time now has come to begin his preparation.”

Wide-eyed, Vera sat back and merely gazed at her twin, trying to take it all in, too stunned for speech. Then she came to slide her arms around her sister's shoulders and they simply held one another, clinging together in fear and futile comfort.

A little later, when their fears had been somewhat assuaged by creature comfort in one another's company, they drew apart to dry their eyes and sniffle forlornly and force reason to prevail once again over human doubts and worries. Alyce swallowed with difficulty and drew herself up straighter, still clinging to her sister's hand, and forced a tight, desperate smile.

“Foolish women, we, to weep when there is a chance to give our sons a better life. We are of the High Deryni born. We were bred to better things.”

Vera nodded: a curt, constrained dip of her chin, trying to match her sister's bravery. “You speak truly. Has…has the king yet told you what must be done?”

“Aye, some. He commands that first of all Alaric must be Named, according to the ancient traditions of our people—though how he has learned of this custom, I know not.”

“Is it wise to Name so young a child as Alaric?” Vera asked. “He is only just four. By tradition, he should have near twice the years.”

“The essential element is that he understands the difference between right and wrong—not his years,” Alyce replied. “What concerns me most is that he not be frightened at his first encounter with serious magic. The ritual is not dangerous, as you know, but it could be very alien to a four-year-old, even one as precocious as my Alaric.”

After a few seconds, Vera said, “Suppose I were to Name Duncan at the same time. Would that help?”

Alyce snorted softly. “Did I not just hear you say that even Alaric is young for this, and that a child should have twice the years before he is Named?”

“Well, I cannot let you do this alone,” Vera said reasonably. “Or Alaric. At least if the boys are together, they will have one another to make it seem less strange.”

Hardly daring to believe it, Alyce gently laid a hand on her sister's shoulder.

“I prayed that you would say that,” she whispered. “Would you really agree to do this for us?”

“How could I
not
?” Vera replied.

Alyce smiled and shook her head slowly. “How I do love you, dear sister.”

“And I, you.”

“Enough to do this thing tonight?”

“
Tonight?
So soon?”

Alyce nodded and took a deep breath. “I know it isn't much time, but who knows what the future may bring? I could die in childbirth—and the king is not young. But now, tonight, you and I are both here, and the boys are here, and—please say you'll do it, Vera.”

Vera sighed wearily, suddenly looking far older than her twenty-five years, then nodded.

“Tonight. So be it.”

 

F
OR
their working place, Alyce chose the tiny Lady chapel that Earl Jared had caused to be built the previous summer, in the heart of the castle gardens. It was there that he and Vera had finally laid their stillborn daughter to rest, at the feet of the chapel's statue of the Blessed Virgin; and it was there that Alyce had already spent many hours pondering her situation and what they must do.

Later that afternoon, while the maids tackled the task of scrubbing the mud off two exuberant boys—Kevin declared himself grown enough to take his own bath—the two mothers brought baskets of “sewing” into the shade of the garden, there to disappear for a time into the chapel's cool recesses and make their preparations. Kenneth and Jared had gone out with a hunting party around noon, and returned early in the evening.

After they all had supped, Alyce drew her husband aside and told him privily what he must know of the evening's plans. Alaric had been long ago tucked up in bed and was sleeping peacefully. Sir Llion did not question that the puppy had been relegated to his room for the night, and would ask no questions in the morning.

“I never guessed that Vera is your sister,” Kenneth said to her in a low voice, as they gazed down at their sleeping son. “Does Jared know?”

Alyce shook her head. “Nay, and he must
not
know,” she replied. “Not because he might think the lesser of Vera, or of Duncan—he is a good man—but because all of them will be safer that way. Right now, you are one of only three people who know the truth—and Vera and I are the other two.” She closed her eyes briefly. “Actually, I lied; there may be four. I'm sure you remember Father Paschal, who was my family's household chaplain. He knows, or knew. But I am not certain he is even still alive…though I hope I would have heard, if he had passed on.”

Kenneth glanced away briefly, pondering what she had said, then took both her hands and grazed her knuckles with his lips before raising his gaze to hers again.

“I remember Paschal, of course. Is he…one of you?”

She nodded.

“But—”

“I know,” she whispered. “And I know that we are supposedly barred from the priesthood. But Paschal is Bremagni-born, and R'Kassan-trained. Matters in the East are not the same as here.” She shrugged. “But I have not heard from him in some time. He is quite elderly by now, if he still lives.”

“And he knows about Vera,” Kenneth said.