The doomed man had not gone easily to his fate. Eyewitnesses said he had screamed as they let him fall, scrabbling frantically at the slimy sides of the well-shaft and abrading hands, elbows, and knees nearly to the bone, but finally had drowned. The monks who took charge of his frozen body afterward, giving him decent burial here in the cathedral grounds, had offered what reassurance they could, that the bishop’s brother had not suffered long; but raw imaginings of Sepp’s final moments were an all-too-regular feature of Oliver’s nightmares.

With a shudder and a shake of his head, the bishop turned his face from his brother’s grave, swallowing down the sour bile that rose in his throat. Though he very much doubted that Sepp had taken an active part in any murder, it probably was true that he had turned a blind eye to the victim’s fate — and had Septimus de Nore not been a priest, the sentence meted out to him might have been fitting punishment for one who had countenanced the heartless murder of a child.

But not just any child. The boy had been Deryni — which, so far as Oliver was concerned, all but justified Sepp’s actions. Some there were who had come to accept the presence of Deryni in Gwynedd, secretly and not so secretly, allowing them to coexist among decent humans, but Oliver was not one of them. The king, however…

Jaws clenching in disapproval, Oliver glanced up at the dark silhouette of Rhemuth Castle looming against the sky beyond the cathedral. Despite civil and canon law that seriously curtailed the rights of Deryni in Gwynedd, Donal Haldane was known to turn a blind eye to the letter of the law when it suited him, and had kept more than one Deryni in his employ and even in his friendship during his long reign. Some even whispered that the dead boy had been Donal’s bastard son, gotten on the Deryni wife of one of his former ministers of state who, rather conveniently, had died very soon after the boy’s birth. Since both mother and son were now dead as well, it served no useful purpose to dwell on that, but it could explain why the king had dealt so severely with those responsible for the boy’s death.

Not that many would dispute the sentence meted out to Sepp’s two lay accomplices, who probably had been the instigators. The king had ordered them gelded and then hanged, for they had buggered the boy quite viciously before throwing him into the well to drown. And Sepp, because it had been his suggestion thus to dispose of the evidence of the others’ crime, had been stripped and flogged for his betrayal of the boy’s trust, then flung down the selfsame well as the victim, to share the fate he himself had decreed.

There it might have ended, had Sepp been a layman like the others. But as a priest, Father Septimus de Nore had been entitled to benefit of clergy — which meant that his part in the matter ought to have been heard in the archbishop’s court, not the king’s — and that, Oliver could not forgive. Nor could he forgive the woman who had uncovered his brother’s guilt: a Deryni, and therefore to be despised. Though both she and the king had been swiftly and justly declared excommunicate for their part in the trial and execution of a priest by secular authority, both had been reinstated in the good graces of the Church with unseemly haste.

Oliver had witnessed the first such reconciliation — achieved by the threat of Interdict for the entire kingdom, if the king did not capitulate. Oliver had been present on that Maundy night when the king made his formal act of submission before the archbishop: the ritual declaration of contrition and acceptance of the penitential scourging that preceded the lifting of his excommunication. Some variation on this eventual outcome had always been a foregone conclusion, since a king dared not long remain adamant in his defiance of ecclesiastical prerogatives.

Less appropriately, the now-deceased archbishop had also been persuaded to lift the excommunication of the Deryni woman, but a few weeks later — and she had since been wed to one of the king’s loyal supporters, and borne him a son.

«Staring at his grave won’t bring him back, you know», said a low voice behind Oliver. «You do this every year, my lord».

Grimacing against the rain, Bishop Oliver turned to cast a sour glance at Father Rodder Gillespie, his secretary and general factotum. Cassock-clad and huddled, like the bishop, in a fur-lined cloak with oiled hood and shoulder capelet, the younger man looked as miserable as Oliver felt, bedraggled and chilled to the bone.

«I do it, dear Rodder, because my brother lies still in his grave and unavenged», the bishop said bitterly, «and because those responsible for his death still prosper. The king has many fine, strapping sons, and the woman who denounced my brother will have her son presented at court later today. I was praying for justice».

«And I have been praying for your good health, as you stand in the rain like a child of no good sense!» Rodder retorted, laying a proprietary arm around his superior’s shoulders and drawing him toward the open doorway of the passage that led away from the abbey churchyard. «Please, my lord. You must come inside and don dry clothes. The archbishop will be wanting to leave soon for court. He has already been asking for you».

Oliver cast a last, longing glance at his brother’s grave, grimly signed himself with the Cross, then let himself be led inside.

Chapter 2

«He shall serve among great men, and appear before princes; he will travel through strange countries; for he hath tried the good and the evil among men».[3]

«Alaric Anthony Morgan, if you don’t stop squirming and let Auntie Zoë put your shoes on, I shall tell your father!»

Lady Alyce de Corwyn Morgan turned from her mirror to cast an exasperated glance at her firstborn, both hands occupied with holding hanks of golden hair in place while a maid arranged her coiffure. Auntie Zoë, actually the child’s half-sister, did her best to keep a straight face as the wayward toddler glanced guiltily from his mother’s face to hers to the offending shoes, lower lip starting to tremble.

«Don’t want those!» he declared, hugging two disreputable-looking bits of scuffed suede against the front of a once-clean shirt. «Want these!»

«Absolutely not!» Zoë said emphatically, plucking the offending shoes from his grasp and tossing them behind her as she held up a newer green one. «Those are nearly worn through and outgrown — and they’d look utterly shabby with your lovely new tunic», she added, indicating the small black tunic laid out on the chest beside him. Embroidered over the left breast was a green Corwyn gryphon, its details picked out in gold. A border of fleury-counter-fleury in metallic gold embellished it at throat, sleeve-edge, and hem.

«No!» said Alaric. «Don’t like the green ones!»

«Alaric, love», said Zoë, «we don’t have time for this today. You know Papa will be very cross if you make him late for court. The green shoes are lovely and soft…»

«No!»

«Here now, what’s this about green shoes?» asked a pleasant male voice from the doorway behind them, as Zoë’s father — and the boy’s — came into the room, accompanied by the youngest of his three daughters, the flaxen-haired Alazais.

Though less colorfully dressed than the women, Sir Kenneth Morgan had also donned formal court attire for the occasion: an ankle-length robe of nubby turquoise wool, its high neck and sleeves lined with silver fox, cinched at the waist with the white belt of his knighthood. Alazais wore a rich brown damask, in contrast to Zoë’s gown of heavy rose silk. Alyce, as the heiress of Corwyn, had chosen deep forest green to complement the Furstána emeralds at her throat. All of them sported varying shades of blond hair, though Kenneth’s had gone more toward silver than sandy in the past several years.