In the King's Service by Katherine Kurtz Read Free Book Online Page B

become a consummate actress during her long years at court.
    Now she played the role of grieving widow as befitted her dead husband’s rank and station, meekly kneeling with her daughters for their father’s Requiem, confident that her façade of grief would not be broached by any of the other Deryni present. Indeed, the grief of her daughters was genuine, in varying degrees, and would reinforce her own illusion.
    Jessilde’s was well contained, already being channeled into the serenity and acceptance come of convent discipline, though her pretty face within her rainbow-edged veil was pale and drawn. Seffira, the four-year-old, was hardly old enough to understand that it was her father who lay in the coffin before them, but Jesiana, the nine-year-old, wept inconsolably, for she had been the apple of her father’s eye.
    When Mass was ended, both Donal and his queen accompanied the procession down into the cathedral’s crypt as Sief’s coffin was carried to its final resting place, destined for honored interment in a vault very near the tombs of Donal’s own ancestors—for the king had made it known that he regarded Sir Sief MacAthan as a friend as well as a loyal servant of the Crown, worthy to lie near the Haldanes in death as he had served them in life. The place was also very near the final resting place of several of Sief’s children—fitting enough, Jessamy supposed, but it also meant that she would have to pass his tomb every time she came to visit the little ones.
    In the meantime, in the days until the stonemasons had finished their preparations, the coffined body would lie atop the table-like tomb-slab of another long-ago good servant of the Haldane Crown: Sir Ferrol Howard, slain with King Urien more than fifty years before at the Battle of Killingford. A tattered banner from that battle hung above Sir Ferrol’s tomb, honoring his sacrifice, and its edge trailed over the floral tributes now laid atop the polished oak of Sief’s coffin, after the pall was removed. Before leaving, Jessamy had offered lilies on behalf of her absent daughter, and a single red rose for the infant Krispin, who would never know the man whose name, but not blood, he bore.
    Afterward, up in the cathedral narthex, she and her daughters lingered briefly to receive condolences from a few of those who had come to pay their last respects—though not many showed such fortitude. While mere association with Deryni no longer carried quite the stigma it once had done, most deemed it prudent not to attract unwelcome scrutiny from those less tolerant of such associations. Archbishop William was known to be one such individual, though he had chosen not to offend the king by declining to celebrate Sief’s Requiem Mass; but even the power of a king might not be enough to protect those who fell into the archbishop’s active disfavor.
    Both king and archbishop were standing on the cathedral steps as Jessamy and her daughters emerged through the great west door, the queen and her ladies already heading down to the horses waiting in the square below. Maintaining a façade of meekness, Jessamy paid her respects to the archbishop and followed, the king trailing behind with several retainers when he, too, had taken his leave.
     
 
THAT night, while Jessamy cradled her infant son and pondered his future—and hers—and the king likewise considered what might come of what he had done, two men of whom both of them had cause to be wary were making their way back to Rhemuth Cathedral. The pair’s mission required that neither of them be seen, so they came by way of the Portal in the cathedral’s sacristy.
    They arrived after the last of the night offices, when the monks of the cathedral chapter were likely not to be about again until Matins, several hours hence. The cathedral was deserted, as they had hoped it would be after the day’s obsequies. Racks of votive candles in the various side chapels spilled wavering patches of illumination across the