In the King's Service (40 page)

For herself, her attempts at rest were less successful, for her worry for her brother deepened with every mile they traveled; and though she tried several times to touch his mind, she could not, at such distance and unassisted. She wished Vera was with her, but since their true relationship was still not known, that had not been possible, just as it had not been when she had laid dear Marie to rest.

They passed through the returning army half a day before reaching the abbey, and picked up a fresh escort and fresher horses. Duke Richard had brought the army forward, and reported that Ahern had still been alive when they left him at the Abbey of Saint Bridget’s. The king and several dozen of his men had remained behind with the stricken Ahern, to await the arrival of Alyce and Zoë.

Even with the use of Alyce’s fatigue-banishing spells, all three of them were exhausted by the time they reached the abbey where Ahern lay. Seeing him huddled in his sickbed, his bedclothes damp with his sweat, did little to lift their spirits.

“Alyce, thank God!” he gasped, as the sisters admitted her and Zoë to his sickroom. “And darling Zoë . . . Alyce, I pray you, help me. . . .”

But there was only so much she could do, even when she had sent the sisters from the room and stationed Sir Kenneth outside the door to keep intruders at bay while she employed her powers as best she could. Zoë held his hand, and bathed his fevered brow, but there was little else she could do.

The king’s battle-surgeon now held out little hope. Curled on his side, with his good knee drawn up to his chest, Ahern periodically was racked by rigours, now burning with fever, grown far worse in the four days since Kenneth had left to fetch her. When Alyce tried to examine his belly, it was taut and hard, and extremely tender. Her powers told her only that something was very wrong.

“I fear the bowel has ruptured,” the surgeon told her, after she came out of his room. “We have tried to keep him quiet, and have given him nothing by mouth save a little water, but his agony has been intense. And his breath—the
foetor oris.
” He shook his head. “It is only a matter of time.”

She cried a little then, weeping wearily against Sir Kenneth’s chest, then dried her tears and went back into her brother’s room. After putting him to sleep—and breathing a silent prayer that a miracle might yet come to pass—she gave her grim report to the king, then fell gratefully into the bed the sisters provided and slept through the night, Zoë curled dismally beside her.

Ahern was no better the next morning, though at least his night had been peaceful. In truth, he was now slipping in and out of coma, and his features had begun to take on a waxen, transparent quality. A priest had been summoned to administer the last rites, and was waiting outside the room with the king and Duke Richard. Sir Jovett was changing a compress on his forehead, in an ongoing attempt to ease his fever.

“I don’t want to die here, Alyce,” he told her, rousing at about midday as she and Zoë held his hands and Kenneth tried to comfort both of them. “And I wanted to marry Zoë. I still do!” he declared, turning his burning gaze first on her and then on her father, then lifting her hand to his lips.

“Zoë Morgan, will you consent to do me the very great honor of giving me your hand in marriage?” he murmured.

“I will,” she breathed, tears streaming down her cheeks. “I will!”

“Then, someone, fetch that priest,” he rasped. “And there should be other witnesses. Is the king about? And Jovett—call Jovett, my faithful friend. . . .”

Kenneth had already gone to fetch the priest, waiting outside with the king and Duke Richard, and returned immediately with all three of them, Jovett following behind.

“But, my lord,” the priest was protesting, “he should receive Unction first. He may not have much time.”

“Time enough to marry this fair lass,” the king replied, grasping the priest’s sleeve and propelling him to the bedside. “Do it, Father!”

Trembling, the priest put on his stole and joined their right hands, leading them through a much abbreviated form of the wedding vows.

“Ego conjugo vos in matrimonium: In Nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti, Amen,”
he concluded, when they had taken one another for better and for worse, for richer and for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death did them part, and Ahern had given her his name and the gold ring engraved with the arms of Lendour—not yet impaled with the Corwyn arms, as had one day been his expectation, but token, nonetheless, of his intentions.

Only then did he allow the priest to anoint him for his final journey, and give him viaticum to speed him on his way. When he slipped again into coma a little while later, Alyce sealed him from pain and gently kissed his forehead in farewell, then left him in the care of his bride of but an hour, herding everyone else out of the room.

It was but another hour later when Zoë appeared at the door, eyes downcast, and stood aside to let them look beyond to where he now lay at peace.

 
 
LATER that morning, after Ahern’s friends had paid their respects, the priest who had married him, shriven him, and given him the Last Rites of his faith sang him a Requiem there in the abbey, his soul uplifted by the angel-voices of the sisters who had cared for him in his final days.

Few mourned more profoundly than his king, who knelt beside Ahern’s grieving sister and his bride of only hours with his face buried in his hands, pondering what would become of the gaping hole left by the dead man’s untimely passing. In his all too short life, Ahern de Corwyn had taken on the mantle of his noble inheritance with passion and courage, overcoming adversities that might have seduced a lesser man into accepting the life of a wealthy and privileged cripple.

Only recently had the first stirrings of a born military genius begun to blossom—along with a quiet self-confidence regarding his Deryni gifts. Both had been of inestimable value in the campaign just past—and both had been lost with his death. Ahern had been but eighteen.

In sum, had he lived, he would have become a formidable Duke of Corwyn, in time. Instead, the mantle of that noble heritage now fell upon his sister Alyce—or rather, her eventual son.

Ensuring that she took a suitable father for that son now became yet another burden that Donal Haldane must bear, for Alyce de Corwyn shared the same blood and heritage as the dead man, and likely with similar potential. Any son of Alyce must be mentored by a father of unimpeachable integrity, with the ability to guide up the boy in the way he should go—a pair of safe hands in which to entrust the power that came with eventually taking the reins of ducal authority in Corwyn.

No such considerations yet stirred the mind of the potential mother of such a duke. For Alyce, the losing of her beloved brother represented a shock not unlike what she had experienced after the death of their father, three years before, and the loss of their sister, not a year past.

Once again, Zoë Morgan knelt at her side, but this time not merely as bosom companion but as sister, briefly bound to Ahern in law and spirit, but fated never to consummate that union. If Alyce now wept, she wept for Zoë as much as for Ahern—and for herself. Her brother’s death changed many things. Some things, however, remained sadly and always the same.

The cheerless journey back to Rhemuth with Ahern’s body was eased somewhat by Zoë’s presence, sharing her grief. Again, the robes of mourning must be pulled from coffers, and again a Requiem was sung for a departed earl of Lendour in the chapel royal, before sending his body home for burial. Though Duke of Corwyn by birth, Ahern de Corwyn had never ruled in his ducal lands, so the decision was taken to inter him at Cynfyn with his father and other scions of the Lendour line.

Much of the next few weeks seemed like a repeat of the obsequies for Keryell three years before, though with an even larger turn-out. Ahern had won the hearts of all his Lendouri subjects during the months of his convalescence and the mastery of his injury’s aftermath, and his people had been well proud when the king consented not only to knight him ahead of custom but to confirm him in his Lendour title, also departing from what the law ordinarily allowed.

Corwyn, too, paid him homage in death, in far greater numbers than they had for his father, for Ahern would have been their duke in fact, had he lived; Keryell had never been aught but caretaker, where Corwyn was concerned.

His young widow they took to their hearts as well, with wistful regret that she now would never carry on his line. The knights who would have been his support and mainstay as he took up his duties—Deinol Hartmann, Jovett Chandos, and even Sé Trelawney come from his unknown duties in far R’Kassi—rallied to the support of his sister, promising to keep safe in trust the lands that now would pass through her line instead of Ahern’s.

Both Alyce and Zoë were exhausted by the time they arrived back in Rhemuth, though their return at least was marked by happier anticipation as the time approached for the queen’s latest lying-in. In addition, the king had appointed a permanent governor for Ratharkin, a baron from the Purple March called Lucien Talbot, which had relieved Earl Jared to return to Rhemuth and make his formal declaration to Vera to become his wife. Very shortly after, Vera had journeyed to her family home near Cynfyn, there to make preparations for a wedding in Kierney the following spring. Letters were awaiting Alyce and Zoë, telling of the wedding plans and inviting their participation in the happy event.

That news, and the birth of a healthy daughter to the queen, early in September, did much to raise the spirits of the court. The baby’s christening a few weeks later, as Silke Anne, was cause for rejoicing: renewal of life in the midst of death. Gradually the pain of Ahern’s passing began to fade, and gradually, both Alyce and Zoë began to smile again.

It was early November when what began as a day’s pleasant diversion set off a chain of events fated to have far-reaching results. The weather, too, had changed, not many days before, and a light powdering of snow lay on the ground: the first of the season. The king was preparing to lead a hunting expedition out into the forests north of the city, and had invited the queen and her ladies to accompany him. It would be her first such outing since the birth of Princess Silke. Richeldis, a fine rider, had been delighted to agree.

Accordingly, certain of her ladies were asked to ride with the royal party, Alyce and Zoë among them. It was an activity usually declined by the older ladies of the court, but the younger ones always relished a day in the field, surrounded by handsome men and handsome horses and with far less scrutiny than was possible within the castle walls.

On this particular day, the king’s party included his handsome and unmarried brother Richard, nearly a dozen of Duke Richard’s most promising squires, some to be knighted at the Twelfth Night to come, and many of the members of the king’s council—perhaps twenty in all, along with as many huntsmen and men-at-arms. Sir Kenneth Morgan rode at the king’s side: steady and reliable, attractive enough, but more of an age with Richard’s generation than that of the king’s other aides and the squires.

The day was sparkling, the sunshine bright and brisk, the horses frisky. They had a good ride for the first two hours, and good luck against the stag. One of the senior squires in the party brought down an eight-point buck, and the falconers totted up a good day’s bag in pigeon and rabbit.

The ambush had been planned by someone with disturbing foreknowledge of the king’s movements. Fortunately, the archers who carried out the attack were far less efficient. The first arrow only grazed the back of the king’s hand, ruining a perfectly good pair of hawking gloves and his good humor; the second took Sir Kenneth Morgan solidly through the back of his thigh, pinning him to his saddle and sending his mount into a fit of bucking affront at this wound to its back. Before a third could be loosed, the king’s men had their master on the ground and protected by a layer of knights and squires, and more of them were surging into the trees to isolate and overwhelm the attackers.

Chapter 24

—JOB 20:24

 
 
 
 
 
 
ALYCE would recall the next few minutes as a confusion of screaming and fighting and fear. Riding with Zoë at the queen’s side, she heard the king’s exclamation and Sir Kenneth’s startled cry as his mount began bucking, and saw the riders nearest the king bear him to the ground for safety, others spurring toward the trees, and the source of the attack. At the same time, other men grabbed the queen’s reins and drew her away from the confusion, one of the squires kneeing Alyce’s mount aside to follow them.

It was all over very quickly. As the king’s men dragged several belligerent men from the trees, somewhat the worse for wear, others helped the king to his feet while more men swarmed around Sir Kenneth’s plunging horse and wrenched its neck downward, one throwing a cloak over its head to hoodwink it and, hopefully, calm it while others went to the aid of the wounded man.

“Careful! His leg is pinned to the saddle!” one man warned, as Kenneth cried out and groped at the grasping hands when someone started to help him down. “Somebody, make this damned horse stop dancing!”

“The barb’s gone right through the saddle,” another man said, sliding a hand under the pinned leg. “I think it’s into the horse’s back as well.”

“Well, make him stand still, or we’ll have to put him down. Someone loose that girth! Easy!”

The horse was still snorting and prancing, trying to buck, to rear, but its handlers mostly kept it with all four feet on the ground. Kenneth was gasping with pain, for every jigging movement of the animal tore at the shaft through his leg. Boldly Alyce broke away from the queen’s party, a horrified Zoë following, and rode to where the drama was being played out, jumping down to join the rescuers.