The Quest for Saint Camber by Katherine Kurtz Read Free Book Online Page B

content. He’s brought me joy. And one of my greatest joys, though I didn’t know it for a long, long time, is that He let me sire you—and all without compromising His honor.”
    Dhugal, much moved, turned awkwardly to gaze out the window again, all but blinking back tears.
    â€œWhat about His laws?” he asked after a moment. “The ones that forbid Deryni to seek the priesthood.”
    â€œLaws are written by men, Dhugal, even if God inspires them. Sometimes men misunderstand.”
    Dhugal glanced sidelong at his father.
    â€œWhat if Maryse hadn’t died, though? Would you still have become a priest? For that matter, did she know what you were?”
    â€œThat I was Deryni? Of course. I told her that afternoon, before we were wed.”
    â€œAnd she didn’t mind?”
    â€œDid she mind? Of course not. To her, it was the same kind of odd but useful talent as the second sight some of your borderers have—just a bit more diverse. I’m not sure she ever quite understood what all the fuss was about, though she knew it could mean my death if I were discovered. The border folk have always been a mystical people. Perhaps the terrible persecution of Deryni in the lowlands never quite reached the same proportions in the borders and highlands.”
    â€œAye, that’s true enough,” Dhugal agreed. “But you haven’t answered my other question. What would you have done, if she hadn’t died?”
    Curiosity about what might have been, loyalty to the mother Dhugal had never really known—Duncan could hardly fault his son for any of that, but neither could he really give an answer. How was he to explain, without shattering whatever idealism might remain to this keen-eyed young man who had already lived so much and in such adversity?
    â€œI honestly don’t know, Dhugal—and believe me, I asked myself the same question many times in those early years.” He twisted the bishop’s ring on his hand as he went on. “The reality is that it would have been several years, at least, before the bitterness between our two clans had died down enough that we could acknowledge our marriage openly. Maryse’s pregnancy would have been seen as a dishonor to her clan, even if she’d told her mother we were really married—which she may have done, since it was your grandmother who saw that you eventually got the cloak clasp I’d given Maryse as a bridal token. And there’s no telling how long it might have been before she could get word to me. As it was, she never did.”
    He sighed. “In any case, because of the circumstances, you probably would have been brought up as a son of her mother, regardless—the easiest immediate way to cover up a daughter’s increasingly apparent indiscretion and save the honor of the clan. You were old Caulay’s grandson, after all, even if you weren’t his son. And he’d just lost a son. In time, when anger eventually cooled between the two clans, there would have been no problem acknowledging the marriage and you.”
    â€œAnd would you have?” Dhugal persisted.
    Duncan shrugged. “We’ll never know, will we? I entered the university at Grecotha in the fall, as planned. Not to have done so would have aroused suspicion—and besides, I loved the academic life. But I delayed taking my vows, waiting for the bad blood between the clans to dissipate.
    â€œThen, when I heard the news the next summer—that she’d died of a fever—there was no reason not to go ahead and make my profession, no reason to suspect you even existed. I grieved and I raged at heaven over the injustice of it, but life went on. I was tonsured at Michaelmas, and soon the memory of my brief flirtation with a secular life had taken on the aspect of a pleasant but fleeting dream.” He looked directly at Dhugal, catching the amber eyes with his blue ones. “Does it bother you that I