Saint Camber (38 page)

He did not even glance up as Guaire went to answer yet another knock at the door. Not until he became aware of someone watching him did he break his concentration and look up.

“Sire!”

In one movement, Camber laid aside his scroll and got to his feet, wondering as he bowed whether anything was wrong. Yesterday he had gotten the impression that the king would be engaged this morning until just before the ceremony. That was still more than an hour away.

“Good morning, Alister,” the king said, favoring the older man with a complacent smile and a nod of his head. “You're not still learning your lines, are you?”

“Only reviewing, Sire. Time has been in short supply this week, as I'm sure you're aware.” He gestured toward the bench opposite his own. “Will you join me?”

Cinhil shook his head. “Not this morning, I'm afraid, though I'll expect you for dinner after the ceremony. I merely wished to make my own small contribution to this momentous occasion. Sorle?”

At his call, his squire Sorle led in two servants carrying something tall and almost the size of a man, covered with a black cloth. Sorle bore a large bundle wrapped in crimson, which he laid carefully on one of the chairs beside the fireplace before supervising the setting down of the object the other two men carried. As Camber moved closer, he could see that the object was a garment rack, similar to one already waiting, vestment-laden, near the foot of his bed. However, he was quite unprepared for the sight which met his eyes as Cinhil pulled off the outer covering.

Vestments. Creamy textured silk so richly worked with jewels and bullion that the cloth almost could not be seen. A bishop's cope, stiff with needlework, clasped with gold and diamonds over a chasuble and stole with orphreys worked in a pattern of wheat sheaves and pomegranates, all picked out in ballasses and crystal. Camber had never seen such vestments.

Finally remembering to breathe, Camber let out a slow, wondering sigh and reached out to run one reverent finger along the edge of the cope. He started to turn toward the king, but Sorle was there, holding a matching miter of gold and jewels which he had withdrawn from the package on the chair. At the edge of his vision, he could see Cinhil watching him, studying his reaction with a pleased smile.

Camber shook his head disbelievingly.

“Sire, I—they're magnificent. A princely gift. I don't know what to say.”

“A simple ‘thank you' will suffice,” Cinhil replied, looking very smug. “I actually find it rather hard to believe, myself—not the vestments, for they were made to my specifications, but the fact that I seem to have you finally at a loss for words.”

“I—You do, indeed, Sire. But, these are far too rich for me. They should belong to a great cathedral, or—”

“Or to the master of a great cathedral, such as you are about to become,” Cinhil interjected. “Don't argue with me about this, Alister. Of course, I realize that such vestments cannot be worn just every day. For one thing, they're entirely too heavy and beastly hot, as you'll discover. So Sorle has also brought some more-usual sets.”

At his signal, Sorle unwrapped the rest of the package and stood aside. Rich silk brocades of emerald green and white gleamed in ordered folds from the fire-lit chair, touched here and there with more sedate embroidery. Camber could only shake his head.

“You do me too great an honor, Sire,” he finally said, fighting down the guilty feelings he was experiencing—for it was Alister to whom Cinhil had just made so revealing a gift—Alister to whom Cinhil had, in effect, finally offered a trusting hand. Alister, not Camber.

Yet, who was Camber, now?

Cinhil, unaware of the inner conflict of the man he had just honored, merely signaled the servants to withdraw.

“I give you only what is your due,” he said quietly, “and perhaps share a little selfishly what can never be mine in fact again. Nay, I am resigned to that, Father,” he went on, as Camber looked disturbed. “I told you that before. And you offered to share a little of your priesthood with me, if I would share my kingship with you. Do you remember?”

Camber nodded, drawing the memory from the part of him which was Alister. “I meant it,” he said softly.

“Then I intend to hold you at your word,” Cinhil murmured. “I will not stop you from going to Grecotha. You may go and set up your diocese. You may have several months, if you like. The archbishop will expect it, and it will take me that long to get things straightened out here—the prisoner ransoms, formation of a council—all the things I should have done on my own before, the things a king should do.

“But, when they're done, I shall call you back. I shall call you back to sit at my side and help me make the laws by which I'll govern this kingdom that your Deryni colleagues have given to me. I didn't want it, Alister. God knows I didn't. But now that I have it, even I can recognize my responsibilities. And, somewhat selfishly, I admit, I can ask you to help me through some of the difficult times, when I sit alone and brood in my chambers about all the things I've already told you far too many times. Will you do that for me?”

Camber laced his fingers together and studied them with downcast eyes. “Is that what you really wish, Cinhil?”

“I think so. Things will certainly be more pleasant for everyone else if I settle down and start doing my job.”

“And what of the king's pleasure?” Camber asked quietly.

“The king's pleasure?” Cinhil laughed bitterly. “The king's pleasure will have to be confined to mere satisfaction that I'm doing the best I can—even if I would rather be anywhere else, back in my monastery, where we both know I'll never be allowed to go again.”

“If you could go back, would you?” Camber asked, looking up wistfully. “I mean, if, right now, this very instant, with all other things as they are, you could be magically transported back to your old cell at Saint Foillan's—would you go?”

Cinhil lowered his eyes. “No,” he whispered. “Because it could never be the same—I realize that now. If, in the beginning, I'd refused to go along, if I'd been steadfast—but, not now. I made my choice, even if it seemed like no choice at that time, and now I have to pay the consequences. One day, perhaps God will forgive me.”

“You still insist that you sinned, by taking up your crown?”

“What else? You've seen my babes, Alister. You've seen that sad young woman who came to be my bride—I, whose only bride should have been the Church. Now, in my own poor, bumbling way, I have to go on, and make the best of things for them, too, at least so far as that's possible. Perhaps one day my sons will learn to rule more wisely than I am likely to do, with this frail, flawed clay.”

As he held out hands which trembled now, Camber sighed and laid an arm around Cinhil's shoulders. After a moment, Cinhil looked up again.

“Forgive me, Father. I didn't mean to bring my maudlin moods to this most happy of days for you. Perhaps you see why I need you near me.”

“I shall try always to be near when you need me, Sire,” Camber said. “When you call, be assured that I shall come as soon as I can. I could count no greater worldly honor than to serve my Lord and King.”

“Thank you. I shall try not to let that service interfere with that other duty which we both owe to a higher Lord,” Cinhil said, finally managing a smile. “But I should go now and let you finish your preparations. You
will
wear the new vestments this morning, will you not?”

“If you wish it, Sire.” Camber smiled. “I only hope I shan't outshine my brother bishops too much. Archbishop Anscom, I know, has access to the cathedral treasures, but poor Father Robert may be totally overshadowed.”

“You need not worry for Robert Oriss,” Cinhil returned smugly, pausing in the doorway. “After all, the revival of the second archbishopric in Gwynedd is also a momentous occasion. I've already delivered a similar set of vestments to him.”

“I see.”

“Of course, they aren't the same as yours. You and he are very different men.”

“I shan't argue with that.”

“And frankly,” Cinhil concluded, just before he disappeared behind the door, “I think it's just as well. I don't think I could cope with two of you, Alister.”

“Bless you, Sire!” Camber chuckled as the door closed with a click.

He wondered what Cinhil would think if he ever found out there
were
two Alisters, at least after a fashion.

An hour later, on the stroke of Terce precisely, Camber squinted in the sunlight of the cathedral close and waited for his part of the procession to begin moving. To either side of him, Joram and Father Nathan stood respectful attendance, ready to escort him when the time came. He eased the weight of his new vestments on his shoulders and stifled a yawn as he watched the beginning of the procession start filing up the steps and into the church. The voices of the cathedral choir, deep inside the reach of stone and glass and timber, were discernible only as a low, muffled echo. Conversation in the close itself had ceased as the column started moving.

Cinhil had been right about the vestments, Camber decided, as he shifted from one foot to the other and tried not to appear as uncomfortable as he felt. The robes
were
heavy, and they were hot—and Camber did not even wear the great jeweled cope and miter yet. The heat of the day was still to come, with the sun burning in a cloudless sky. Already he could feel sweat forming beneath the heavy alb and chasuble.

With a stoic sigh, he turned inward to seek and find the controls which would lower his body temperature just slightly. He wondered how his human compatriot, Robert Oriss, was faring in the heat—Oriss, who had no recourse to Deryni disciplines.

Ahead of them, feet shuffled and the line began to move. Most of the other bishops of Gwynedd and the neighboring areas had come to attend the ceremony, many of whom Camber had just met for the first time today, as Alister as well as Camber: Niallan of Dhassa, the traditionally neutral and essentially independent bishop who would be working closely with the new Archbishop of Rhemuth; young Dermot of Cashien, whose uncle had been bishop before him and was whispered to have been more in kinship than uncle to his brother's child; Ulliam of Nyford, head of the southernmost diocese, who must cope with the ruin left by Imre's abortive attempt to build yet a third capital in Ulliam's port city—and four of Gwynedd's six itinerant bishops, with no fixed sees, whose faces Camber was just beginning to associate reliably with names: Davet and Kai and Eustace and Turlough.

All of the assisting prelates wore full pontificals, carried the stylized shepherds' staffs of their offices with the crooks turned inward, since they were in Anscom's jurisdiction.

And ahead of the bishops, just now disappearing through the vast double doors, were others of the procession in colorful array: candle bearers and crucifers, thurifers swinging fragrant censers on long golden chains; the ecclesiastical knights, Michaelines and others, in their mantles of azure and scarlet and gold; surpliced priests bearing the regalia which would be bestowed on the two bishops to be made.

Next came the mitered abbots of Gwynedd—Crevan Allyn of the Michaelines in his cloak of blue; Dom Emrys of the Order of Saint Gabriel, white-haired, white-robed shadow of a man, gliding wraithlike in the invisible mantle of his Deryniness; the masters of the
Ordo Verbi Dei
, the Brotherhood of Saint Joric, and a handful of others—and then the bishops.

Finally, it was Camber's turn, to climb slowly the worn cathedral steps and pass into the shade, Joram and Nathan catching up the edges of his chasuble as he walked, to follow two small boys who bore their golden candlesticks as though these were the most precious objects they had ever touched. Hands folded reverently before him, eyes downcast to minimize visual distractions, Camber stilled his mind and prayed for grace and guidance. As they moved up the aisle, followed finally by Oriss and then by Anscom and his attendants, the strains of the introit reverberated joyously among the columns and arches and galleries:

“Fidelis sermo, si quis episcopatum desiderat …”
Faithful is the saying, If a man desire the office of bishop, he desireth a good work. A bishop then must be blameless …

And from his favored place in the right of the choir, a restless King Cinhil watched and brooded, dreaming of days gone by, longing to be even the humblest part of that sacred company.

But on his head was a royal crown, and at his side stood a wife and queen, and all around was the panoply of a regal court—worldly glory, for him who would have preferred a homespun habit and a simple monkish cell.

He shifted impatiently as the bishops came into view, watching until one grizzled gray head stood out among the others, near the end. On him the king fastened his attention, studying the seamed, craggy face and wondering what really went on behind the pale, sea-ice eyes. As the bishops passed him, to pause before the High Altar and genuflect before taking their places, he breathed a prayer of thanksgiving for his new-found friend and confidant. He bowed his head and knelt as Archbishop Anscom mounted the steps to the altar and began the Mass.

The liturgy progressed apace through the Gospel readings. Then, when the choir had sung the
Veni Creator
, invoking the presence of the Spirit upon those about to be consecrated, Robert Oriss and Alister Cullen stood before the throne of the Primate of All Gwynedd and were examined on their fitness for the offices they were about to assume:

Would they be faithful and constant in proclaiming the Word of God? Would they sustain and protect the people of God and guide them in the ways of salvation?

Would they show compassion to the poor and to strangers and to all who were in need? Would they seek out the sheep who had strayed, and gather them back into the fold?

Would they love with the charity of a father and a brother all those whom God placed in their care, even at the cost of their own mortal lives?