The king’s other children were also a focus for Alyce’s attention in those months leading into Advent, and especially the ones nearer Alaric’s age. After returning from Arc-en-Ciel, Alyce had fallen back into her role as wife and mother, advisor to her husband concerning Lendour and Corwyn — and thereby, advisor to the king regarding these regions — and companion to the queen. She had also obtained permission to enroll Alaric for the schooling given the royal princes and princesses and the children of the queen’s other ladies.
Despite all of this, Alyce found those months of waning autumn and early winter bleak and lonely, for Kenneth had been all but obsessed by his quest for justice in Hallowdale. She did receive frequent letters from Zoë, assuring her of her happiness and the fulfillment she felt, working at Jovett’s side — and late in November, joyful news of Zoë’s first pregnancy — but the letters only made Alyce feel the absence of her heart-sister more keenly, even though she and the queen soon picked up the former intimacy of their friendship and became nearly inseparable. It helped, but she still missed Zoë and the companionship they had shared for so many years — and Vera, whose kinship she must never allow to be discovered. Even Kenneth did not know.
It was as mother to a bright and active young son that she found her greatest fulfillment, as he became less and less her baby and more and more a person. Alaric was quick and facile, a mannerly child, and easily kept up with other boys half again his age. Prince Brion and his brother Nigel were enough older than Alaric that they paid him little mind, save to include him in the teasing they gave their younger brother and their sisters, but Alaric and all the younger children interacted well. He longed to begin his page’s training, though he was yet too young for that, but he relished the lessons he shared with the royal princes and the sons of some of the favored courtiers. All the royal children were thriving, with the youngest now three years old — a matter of some concern to the queen, for there had been no royal pregnancy since Jathan.
The prospect of a brother or sister for Alaric was much on his parents’ minds as well, as the nights grew longer and the weather worsened, for Alaric had also turned three, a week before Prince Jathan, and Alyce had yet to conceive again. Periodic reports on the progress of Zoë’s pregnancy only underlined Alyce’s own failure, and she worried that she had, indeed, miscarried earlier in the year; but she suspected that Kenneth’s ongoing fervor over the incident at Hallowdale was also taking its toll.
«You must let it go, my darling», she told him one wintry night early in December. «You must accept that there are some things that you simply cannot change, however much your honor cries out for justice. We Deryni have long been aware of this inequity. Come; we shall light a candle for those unfortunate victims, and then let them rest in peace, for they surely are in the bosom of God’s love».
He agreed to make the gesture, and went with her hand in hand down drafty and deserted corridors to the chapel royal in fleece-lined slippers and heavy night robes bundled over nightshirts and sleeping shifts, there to light a solitary candle against the darkness and weep together by its light, holding one another against the grief and the fear, for it could have been Alyce burnt at the stake in that distant village, or another like it — or even in the cathedral square of Rhemuth itself, if she were ever discovered in flagrant transgression against the narrow strictures set by the bishops against those of her kind.
Later when they had returned to their chamber, their urgent lovemaking was silent and even violent, as if Kenneth tried, by sheer force of will and flesh, to imbue his wife with something of his fierce protection and strength, though he knew that, if the unthinkable occurred, he might not be able to protect her as he had done before their marriage.
It was a sober winding-down of what had been a year punctuated both by joy and by sorrow. Alyce had hoped that she might have conceived on that night, to cancel out some of the sorrow with hope and new life, but the next weeks of waiting did not prove it so. As Advent counted down to the eve of Christmas, the weather grew increasingly foul, and it became clear that even the rebirth of the Light would be cloaked in gloom.
The king and his family kept the feast of Christmas quietly that year, as befitted the religious aspect of the season, but a ferocious ice storm during the night of Christmas itself curtailed the appearance of the royal family at the cathedral the next morning for the traditional St. Stephen’s Day Mass and distribution of royal largesse afterward. It was a far cry from that other St. Stephen’s Day when Kenneth Morgan had finally summoned the courage to make his proposal of marriage to Alyce de Corwyn, but the two of them made a virtue of the weather as an excuse to keep mostly to their apartments that day, while Llion amused their son.
On the day following, the Feast of Holy Innocents, the weather improved enough — barely — for the queen and her ladies to venture down to the cathedral at midday with the delayed largesse, for many of the people of the city depended on this bounty from the royal coffers to survive the winter. A resolute Prince Brion assisted his mother and her ladies in distributing the gifts of food and silver pennies from the cathedral steps, well wrapped up against the weather in fur-lined hat and cloak and stout boots, but the younger children they left in the care of those responsible for their supervision when parents could not be around.
For Alaric, that meant stalking the castle halls with the younger princes and several of the junior squires, overseen by Sir Llion. The king had already rescheduled his customary petitioners’ court until the morning of Twelfth Night, though he still would hold it on the steps of the cathedral, and had planned a day’s hunting while the queen carried out her royal duties; but he and his party returned after only a few hours, wet and half-frozen and without success in the field.
The weather deteriorated steadily in the week leading up to Twelfth Night Court, such that it became clear that many of those normally expected would not be able to complete the winter journey to Rhemuth. On the eve of Epiphany, however, an exhausted and half-frozen rider arrived from Coroth with news that soon would dominate nearly every conversation within the walls of Rhemuth Castle.
«An urgent dispatch from the Corwyn regents, Sire», the messenger blurted out, even as he half-collapsed to one knee before the startled king and extended a sealed dispatch in a gloved hand that shook from cold and fatigue. It was Sir Robert of Tendal, Kenneth realized, as the young man pulled off his fur-lined cap, son of the Chancellor of Corwyn. «The Crown Prince of Torenth is dead!»
«Prince Nimur? He’s dead?» Donal repeated, shocked. He and Richard and Kenneth and a few of his other closest advisors had been finalizing the schedule for the next day’s court ceremonials around a table set before the fire in the king’s withdrawing room, fortified by steaming cups of mulled wine. At Sir Robert’s bald announcement, however, every face had turned first toward the gasping newcomer, then toward the king, mouths agape.
«Tell me what you know», Donal ordered, at the same time breaking the seal and unfolding the missive. «Richard, pour him some wine, and someone give him a seat closer to the fire».
Still breathing heavily, numbly fumbling his way to the stool that Jiri Redfearn quickly vacated, Sir Robert peeled off his sodden gloves and gratefully accepted the mulled wine that Duke Richard set between his hands, nodding his thanks as Kenneth removed his own cloak and draped it close around the man’s shoulders.