Saint Camber (39 page)

They would.

Laying their hands upon the cathedral's most sacred relics, they vowed to discharge to the end of their lives the office about to be passed on to them by the imposition of hands. Prostrating themselves before the High Altar in humility, as all priests had done from time immemorial before assuming further holy orders, they prayed for the grace to keep their promises, while the archbishop and his clergy knelt and recited the traditional litany of saints.

Then, rising only long enough to move before the archbishop's throne, the two men knelt again, side by side, there to receive the sacramental imprint of prelacy, the apostolic laying on of hands, first by the archbishop, and then by all the other attending bishops.

With the open Gospel laid across their shoulders by two assisting bishops, they were sealed with holy chrism on head and hands, then invested with the symbols of their new offices: the Gospel, that they might teach; the ring of amethyst, as a seal of faithfulness with the Church they served; the miter, crown of earthly authority, but also weight upon the brow to remind that the title of bishop derived not from his rank, but from his duty—for it was the part of a bishop to serve, rather than to rule.

And last, the crozier, the pastoral staff—sign of the Shepherd's office, to watch over and guard the flocks given them to govern in God's Name.

Following a Mass of Thanksgiving, the new bishops were led through the cathedral to bless the congregation for the first time, while the triumphant strains of the
Te Deum
reverberated among the vaulted arches.

Afterward, in the great hall of the castle, King Cinhil held a reception and feast for the new bishops and their brethren—as lavish a celebration as had yet been held during his reign. The event was not the glittering spectacle of the Festillic years. Cinhil instinctively shied away from any hint of that; and besides, the ways of worldly formality were still alien to him, and would always make him a little uncomfortable. Still, for Cinhil, it was festive.

Seating Bishop Cullen to his right, and Archbishops Oriss and Anscom to his left, on either side of his queen, Cinhil presided over a hall of all Gwynedd's highest clergy and baronage, drinking the health of his two new bishops and appearing almost happy, especially once his queen had retired and he was left to the company of his male friends.

Camber left for Grecotha the next morning—a long day's ride stretched out to three, because of the panoply in which a prince of the Church was expected to travel for the first entry into his new benefice. Cinhil had granted him an escort of a dozen knights to guard him on his way, and these were augmented amply by a score of the archbishop's own crack household troops, who would stay on at Grecotha to become his own. In addition came a full staff of chaplains, clarks, and other servants who would assist the new master of Grecotha in setting his domain in order. Domestic servants had already been sent ahead, a week before, to reopen what served for a bishop's residence and to provision it for occupation.

The next weeks passed quickly, as summer eased into autumn and the daylight hours diminished. The Diocese of Grecotha, one of the oldest in the Eleven Kingdoms, was centered in the heart of the great university town of the same name, and had been without a vicar for more than five years. As a consequence, its new bishop found himself much occupied with pastoral duties.

There were ecclesiastical courts to convene, confirmations to be administered, priests to ordain. He must make official visitations to every parish and abbey and school under his jurisdiction, to ascertain that all were in competent hands and running as they should, and take steps to correct, if they were not. He had also to perform the routine duties of any ordinary priest: daily celebration of Mass, administering of other sacraments—baptism, confession, marriage, extreme unction.

All of these, well-known to Alister but new and awesome to him, Camber performed, and learned much of himself and his fellow man in their performance. He found himself falling into bed at night to sleep a dreamless sleep, his physical strength continually shored up by his Deryni abilities. He wondered how ordinary men functioned under the pressures of the job, with only their human resources to rely upon, and decided that it could only be through the gift of Divine grace. He marvelled, under the circumstances, that he was able to keep abreast of it at all.

And when Camber was not traveling, he was spending the bulk of his waking hours reviewing the administrative records of his diocese and directing his assistants in the setting up of a more efficient governing system. The office of Dean was reinstated almost immediately, the appointment going to a quiet but competent human priest named Father Willowen, who seemed singlehandedly to have stood between the diocese and total administrative collapse for the entire five years of the see's vacancy.

One of the most appalling discoveries which Camber made, and which was in no way Willowen's fault, was the deplorable state of the cathedral archives. To Camber, reared with a reverence for the written word which approached that of his religious faith, the state of neglect of these important records was inexcusable.

The fault, he soon discovered, was not a recent one. It lay with the confusion which had followed the separation of the famed Varnarite School from the cathedral chapter more than a century and a half ago, when the ultra-liberal Varnarites had taken their library—and, Camber suspected, a great part of the cathedral's—to new quarters in another part of the city. Never really properly reorganized since then, the present records showed glaring lapses, and infuriating juxtapositions of fiscal, canonical, and secular material. Some of the disorganization seemed almost methodical.

He turned Willowen and a handful of monks and clarks loose on the project, and order slowly began to emerge from bibliophilic chaos. Willowen was a martinet when it came to overseeing a task of this magnitude, and hounded his compatriots unmercifully if they did not work with enough speed or accuracy to please him. Oddly enough, no one seemed to resent Willowen's manner, perhaps realizing that he acted thus because he cared; and the work got done.

Camber took to spending time alone in the older archive sections himself, for his skill in ancient languages was useful in deciphering some of the more obscure entries buried on back shelves. One find which he did not share with Willowen and his monks was a very ancient cache of scrolls dating from long before the Varnarite separation, in a language which even Camber could read only with difficulty. He had no time to explore these in detail when he found them, but the few words and phrases which he had managed to scan during his initial examination were enough to convince him that no human should ever see these scrolls. One of them, of a somewhat later date than most of the others, seemed to tie in with some of the ancient records which he and Evaine had been studying while still in Caerrorie. In another, he had found mention of the Protocol of Orin!

But the Bishop of Grecotha dared not indulge these interests overmuch. Winter was fast approaching, and with winter would come the summons from Cinhil, commanding attendance at the capital. In light of that priority, all personal pursuits must pale, though he would try not to let that keep him from sending word to Evaine of his discovery.

And that was one thing he
was
able to do: to stay in relatively close touch with his children. Beginning with the first week after his arrival in Grecotha, he had been receiving regular fortnightly communications from the capital via Joram, whom Cinhil had decided was the ideal confidential messenger between himself and the new Grecotha bishop. Cinhil had perceived Joram as a dual-purpose messenger, able to transmit news of Alister's old Michaeline Order as well as missives from his king. Joram and Alister
had
been close, after all. Who more fitting?

Of course, Cinhil did not know that Joram also brought reports to and from Archbishop Anscom, in addition to his own astute observations on the state of Cinhil's progress; or that Evaine and Rhys, too, were funneling royal intelligence to Camber in their own ways. Cinhil knew only that Joram's return reports indicated considerable progress in the revival of Grecotha as a functioning arm of the ecclesiastical hierarchy and that Bishop Alister Cullen was proving as able a diocesan administrator as he had been of the powerful Michaeline Order. That boded well, in Cinhil's mind, that the said bishop would be able to do the same for a kingdom, come the first snows of winter. Accordingly, he left Alister in peace through the summer and early autumn. Besides, Cinhil was busy getting his own life in order.

Grecotha was a time of personal ordering for Camber, as well, not only from the standpoint of learning to function as an ecclesiastical administrator, but as an experience in being alone. Of course, he was truly alone only rarely, but there was a loneliness nonetheless, for there was no one he could really talk to here in Grecotha.

Of all those who had come with him from Valoret and stayed, only Guaire had he known before—and the human Guaire was busily trying to find his own spiritual balance. As autumn approached, and the harvest was reaped and gathered, Guaire spent an increasing amount of time under the tutelage of the priests and brothers of the episcopal household, growing somewhat distant from Camber. He also began to make a point of chatting with each messenger who came to the Grecotha residence, especially those in orders, Deryni as well as human.

Camber first became aware of Guaire's growing Deryni attachments one day late in October. He was strolling with his breviary in the newly cleared gardens of the fortified manor house which served as bishop's residence, savoring the last dregs of sunlit autumn, when he noticed Guaire at the other end of the garden, in animated conversation with a short, wiry man in the habit of the Gabrilite Order. The man's back was to Camber, the peculiarly Gabrilite braid of reddish auburn hair hanging almost to his cinctured waist, as thick as a man's wrist. Camber thought he saw the green of a Healer's cloak behind the man's body. The man looked vaguely familiar, but there were several Gabrilites who were also Healers.

Curious, he started to go toward them, the better to discover why Guaire should be talking with a Gabrilite, when he realized that he did know the man—and that the man had known Camber MacRorie. The Gabrilite priest and Healer was Dom Queron Kinevan, Deryni like all members of his Order, and a particularly gifted one, at that—a Healer of minds and souls, as well as of bodies, acknowledged as a skilled retreat master. While he and Camber had not been intimates, still, Camber knew the man's abilities. It made him all the more curious as to why Queron was spending time with Guaire—Guaire, who was bright and pleasant, but hardly in Queron's class. By their expressions and relaxed manner, this was not the first time they had talked thus.

Pausing in the lee of a leafless tree, Camber opened his breviary and pretended to read, reflecting on the possible reasons for Queron's presence in Grecotha. But even though something rang strange about the apparent relationship, he could hardly come out and ask Queron why he was talking to Guaire. Nor did he dare probe Guaire's mind for an answer, so long as Queron was present. He dared not risk the possibility that Queron might recognize his unique mental touch.

With a sigh, Camber closed his book and turned to make his way into another part of the garden, away from Guaire and Queron. He was probably being overly sensitive anyway. The meeting was likely quite innocuous. Perhaps Queron had business with the canons of the Varnarite School, and Guaire, in the bright-polished zeal of a burgeoning religious vocation, had seized on the Gabrilite as a mentor. Perhaps he had even known Queron before.

Foolish for Camber to let himself become apprehensive over an incident which was probably as innocent as Guaire's new-found faith!

C
HAPTER
E
IGHTEEN

Even the mystery which hath been hid from ages and from generations, but now is made manifest to his saints
.

—Colossians 1:26

Camber never got a chance to follow up on Guaire's visitor, for it was only a few days later that the summons from Cinhil finally came.

Camber, comfortably perched on a stable gate in worn Michaeline riding leathers, had been watching the farrier put new shoes on a favorite dun mare. The ring of hammer on anvil had temporarily blunted his hearing, so he did not hear the two men approaching from the stable yard until Andrew the smith broke his rhythm to glance curiously up the stable aisle. Camber turned to see Guaire escorting a familiar blond figure in Michaeline blue. He jumped down from his perch as Joram approached to kiss the episcopal ring.

“Joram, it's good to see you!” he said, allowing one of Alister's infrequent grins of pleasure to crease his face. “I fear you've caught me playing truant from my duties. I should be preparing Sunday's homily, but instead I thought to watch Falainn shod and then slip away for an hour's ride. I'd ask you to join me, but I doubt you have any great desire to put backside to saddle again today.”

Joram returned his father's grin, slipping easily into that relaxed façade which the two of them had built over the past months for the public side of their relationship. He was dressed almost identically to his father and superior, except that he also wore the sturdy Michaeline mantle, hood pushed back from his gleaming yellow hair. Though he must have ridden many miles to arrive so late in the day, he looked as he usually did: unruffled and composed, hardly a golden hair out of place.

“Your Grace is too observant, as usual,” he murmured, bowing slightly in acknowledgment. “And I fear that someone else may have to deliver your homily on Sunday. The King's Grace requires your presence within the week.”

“Within the week?” Camber glanced at Guaire, then back at Joram, who was pulling a sealed letter from the pouch slung across his chest.