Saint Camber (56 page)

“I shall try to make this as brief as possible, Father—if I may call you by that title without causing undue pain. All here know that you were once a priest.”

Cinhil winced at that, as Queron had intended, reminding all that this was at least one reason Cinhil had for not wishing any honor for Camber. Queron glanced at the floor, considering his next barb.

“Very well, Father. You affirm, then, that you were, indeed, present in Bishop Cullen's chamber on that night before the Blessed Camber's funeral?”

“Yes,” came Cinhil's whispered reply.

“And that you witnessed something quite out of the ordinary concerning Bishop Cullen on that night?”

“Yes,” Cinhil said again.

“Excellent,” Queron said, scanning his audience and gauging their response. “Now, Father, please tell these Reverend Lords what you saw that night, in as much detail as you can remember. We wish specifically to hear of anything relating to Camber.”

Cinhil closed his eyes and swallowed, then looked at the floor and began to relate what he believed he had seen.

His initial testimony did not take long. Glossing over what Dualta had already related, for Dualta's recollection differed very little from his own as far as sequence of events, Cinhil dwelt instead on his own reaction to the alleged miracle: his white-faced disbelief at first, and then his growing awe and almost fear as he realized that he was not mad, and that the others had seen the same thing.

“I did not want to believe it,” Cinhil whispered, “even though Dualta had stated what I suppose we were all thinking. I told myself that we must have been mistaken, that miracles do not happen any more. Even Lord Rhys would not commit himself; and Healers are probably the closest thing we know to miracle-workers on an everyday basis. He said that Bishop Cullen seemed to be out of danger, but he declined to speculate on how that had come about. When I asked whether it could have been through Camber's intervention, he said he was not qualified to judge.

“It was then that I realized that there was another witness I hadn't noticed before.” The audience sat forward, for from here, Cinhil's testimony was new.

“There was a young Michaeline monk kneeling in the doorway of the oratory. Rhys told me that his name was Brother John, and that Bishop Cullen had asked to see him on a minor matter of discipline. They'd forgotten about him in all the confusion.”

Here, Queron cleared his throat. “For the record, Father, though Lord Dualta confirms the presence of this Brother John, neither he nor any other member of the Michaeline Order whom we have questioned, has been able to locate this Brother John since the night in question. There appears to be no record that he ever existed. We know that you also tried to find him. Were you more successful?”

Cinhil shook his head, to a few rumblings of disapproval from among the bishops.

“Thank you, Father. Please continue. We'll come back to this point a little later.”

Cinhil bowed nervously and seemed to steel himself to speak again. Not a sound came from his rapt audience.

“This—Brother John was kneeling just inside the oratory. I asked him whether he'd seen what had just happened. He replied that he was only an ignorant monk, and not learned in such matters, but I insisted that he answer. I remember that when he looked up, he had the most incredible eyes I'd ever seen—a sort of smoky black.”

“Go on, please,” Queron urged.

“Yes, sir. He—admitted that he had seen something. And when I pressed him for details, he said, ‘It was
him
. He drew
his
shadow across the vicar general.'”

“And by
‘him,'
what did you take him to mean?” Queron asked softly.

“I—asked him,” Cinhil breathed. “I asked him, and he said—he said, ‘It seemed to be the Lord Camber, Sire.'” Cinhil took a deep breath and closed his eyes, almost speaking to himself. “I shall remember his words until the day I die. He said,
‘It seemed to be the Lord Camber. Yet, he is dead. I have seen him! I—I have heard of goodly men returning before, to aid the worthy …'”

A great sigh swept through the hall as Cinhil's voice trailed off. Even Queron did not press him further. After a moment, Cinhil slowly opened his eyes, though he still did not appear to see. He raised his hands to stare at them, willing the clenched fists to relax, then let them fall slack at his sides as he sighed and looked up at Queron. Queron had drawn out of him what he had not wished to say, even though it was the truth. Now Cinhil wanted only to escape, to be quit of this public testimony for a man he had at once resented and feared.

Queron let out his own breath and gave Cinhil an acknowledging nod.

“Thank you, Father. Would you please tell the court what, if anything, happened after that?”

“Little more,” Cinhil murmured. “I had to get away and think. I still did not want to believe what I had seen and heard. I—told them not to discuss the matter, and then I left.”

“And went …?”

“To—to the cathedral for a little while, to—pray beside
his
body.” He hung his head again. “After that, I returned to my apartments,” he whispered.

“And nothing noteworthy occurred in the cathedral?” Queron persisted, though gently, for beyond this point, even he did not know what to expect.

But Cinhil only shook his head, raising his eyes to Queron's with such determination that even Queron's aplomb was a little shaken. The Healer-priest bowed profoundly, one hand sweeping in a gesture of “as you wish,” patently acknowledging Cinhil's shift back from witness to monarch. He seemed to regain most of his poise as he returned his attention to the archbishop. He had, after all, accomplished his purpose.

“Your Grace, I think we need not cross-examine this witness further. May he be excused?”

“Of course,” Jaffray said. “Sire, if you wish, we can adjourn for the rest of the day. I realize that this has been very difficult for you.”

For answer, Cinhil turned his Haldane gaze hard on the archbishop, then pivoted slowly to scan the hall. His audience shrank under his scrutiny—all except Camber—not daring to speak or even to move as he finally ascended the three dais steps to pick up his crown and take his seat. Though he was a little pale as he replaced the crown on his head, his face now betrayed no hint of what he had just been through. That, in itself, was enough to give him a vaguely foreboding air. It did not help that he avoided looking at Jaffray as he laid his hands formally on the arms of the throne.

But Camber, reading resignation as well as resentment for what had just transpired, did not share the apprehension of his colleagues. In a flash of vivid insight, he knew that even Cinhil, in his anger and frustration, had finally realized that one did not always have a choice of games which must be played. Not himself; not the bishops; not even Queron.

And so, there would be no reprisals. Now Cinhil was simply going to reassert the proper balance between king and Church, to ensure a viable working relationship for the future. Cinhil had lost this particular battle, but he would not always lose. He had won a minor victory only the night before, when he had gained an understanding ally in his struggle to be what he wanted to be, as well as what he was forced to be. Cinhil had learned much in the past year.

“We thank you for your concern, Archbishop, but no recess is necessary on our account,” Cinhil said, every inch the gracious monarch. “We would not have it said that the King of Gwynedd in any way impeded the functioning of this august court, regardless of any personal biases which he himself might hold. As a dutiful son of the Church, the king sits here at Your Grace's invitation, and by your leave. Pray, continue, and accept our apologies if we seemed less than cooperative earlier.”

To that, Jaffray had no choice but to make placating noises and assure the king that the court sympathized with his personal involvement, and certainly understood his seeming reluctance to testify, either for or against the matter under consideration. Cinhil accepted his reassurances graciously, and everyone seemed to relax.

After a few false starts, Dualta was recalled to complete his testimony and to verify Cinhil's story of the mysterious Brother John; and then Rhys and Joram were also recalled, though they could add nothing to what had already been said. Rhys had never seen Brother John before that night in Cullen's chambers, and Joram claimed that the monk had come to him that evening with a story that Bishop Cullen had summoned him. Bishop Cullen, of course, could neither confirm nor deny Joram's statement, having lost any precise memory of whether he had summoned a Brother John or not.

That about wound up the morning's testimony, other than to speculate on the significance of the elusive Brother John. The scant evidence regarding his existence, other than the testimony concerning his one-time appearance, furthered the air of mystery surrounding him, and even raised in one listener's mind the possibility that said John had actually been an angel, sent to bear witness to God's most recent miracle. That theory, voiced by the human Bishop of Nyford, who was by now an avid Camberian supporter, could not have been disproven except by those who dared not reveal the truth. And so, since the monk could not be produced, and it could not readily be proven that he had ever existed—perhaps he
had
been an angel. The possibility certainly did not detract from the growing Camberian hagiography.

Similar speculation continued after a late lunch break, with numerous lesser witnesses coming forward to attest to changes wrought in their lives by the supposed intercession of the Blessed Camber: miraculous cures at his tomb, petitions answered, protection derived from calling upon the
Defensor Hominum
—the Defender of Humankind. Of course, none of the claims was necessarily provable by the rigorous criteria set in the morning's testimony—but by then it did not really matter. The Council of Bishops was convinced. By the end of the afternoon, it was clear that only formalities remained to be performed before Camber's sainthood would be officially recognized.

Camber himself could only sigh and accept the inevitable, casting his required vote with a silent prayer that the God Who had sustained him through so much already, and had allowed this to happen, would also accept this final bit of hypocrisy on his part.

The vote was unanimous, the response to its announcement almost universally joyous. On the fourteenth of the month, two weeks away, Camber Kyriell MacRorie would be formally canonized, to be known henceforth as Saint Camber of Culdi,
Defensor Hominum
—and other titles to be determined in the intervening days before the official celebration.

Camber said little as the company dispersed, drawing solace from the companionship of Joram and Jebediah, who could legitimately be with him at such a moment, and casting one long, sorrowful look at Evaine and Rhys in the gallery, before he passed out of the hall. He took no supper that night, and spent the evening in seclusion after hearing Vespers with his son and Jebediah. His new status was going to take some getting used to.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY
-F
IVE

How is he numbered among the children of God, and his lot is among the saints!

—Wisdom of Solomon 5:5

The season changed, and it was true autumn, and Saint Camber of Culdi was proclaimed in all the parishes and cathedrals of Gwynedd. The season changed again, and the Feast of Christmas came and went, and then it was the new year, though the Three Kings had not yet come bearing gifts.

And in the early hours of a day midway between the coming of the Sun of Justice and the feast known as Epiphany, the Bishop of Grecotha knelt in the chapel now dedicated to the new-made saint and pondered what he had become—this man whom the world knew as Alister Cullen, but who knew himself to be the very Camber of the legends.

Or, not the Camber of the legends, precisely, for that man was now a man who had never really lived, lauded with tales of miraculous doings never wrought by him in life, and now expounded when the man himself could not refute their claims. Or, he could have, but he would not. So far as the world was concerned, Camber Kyriell MacRorie was dead and must remain so.

Resignedly, Camber gazed at the shrine his adherents had built to the man they had made of him, trying to understand at a level of the heart what his mind and reason had been forced to accept months before. All Gwynedd was talking about Saint Camber now. This was the first time he had found the new shrine empty in the nearly two months since the formal canonization, and this was only because it was snowing bitterly outside, and in the deepest dark of the night. What was it that drew them?

He searched the face of the image they had made of him, the life-sized figure of a Camber who had never been, carved in a pale gray marble the way Guaire had seen him, cowl fallen back from gilded hair, the painted face upraised to gaze at hands which held a royal diadem, a replica of the crown of crosses and leaves which Camber had set on Cinhil's head that night which seemed so long ago.

Sanctus Camberus, Defensor Hominum, Regis Creator
, the legend read on the altar front. Saint Camber, Defender of Humankind, Kingmaker. To either side of the altar, in hand-deep pans of sand set on wrought bronze stands, scores of candles blazed in tawny golden splendor, illuminating the chapel without any taint of colored glass. The entire chamber had been refaced with white stone, carved alabaster screens replacing the old wooden ones, even the floor being re-tiled in a white-and-gray cross pattern which some said was destined to become the badge of the Servants of Saint Camber, who had commissioned the entire work. It was rumored that the Camber shrine at the Servants' abbey in Dolban was even more sumptuous, though Camber had not yet summoned the courage to go and see it.

His own trepidations aside, he wondered what it all meant in terms of the world's reality and not his own. As a cohesive force in the society of Gwynedd, he knew that the cult of Saint Camber was already showing incredible gains, drawing together humans and Deryni in ways which Camber himself could never have foreseen in the days when he had tried to prevent what had happened. Who could have dreamed that Saint Camber, as well as being the Defender of Humankind, would now be hailed as the patron of Deryni magic, a proponent of responsible use of that power—which was all the human population had ever asked of the Deryni anyway: that they not be exploited by their more gifted brethren. Certainly, no one resented the ministrations of the Healers, for example.