Saint Camber by Katherine Kurtz

Author:Katherine Kurtz
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi

chapter fourteen

I am afraid of you, lest I have bestowed upon you labour in vain.

—Galatians 4:11

No immediate repercussions arose from the night's work—at least none of which Camber was aware. Guaire settled into the routine of serving his new master without a whisper of difficulty or friction, gently weaning the solicitous Johannes to other duties. He even adopted a semi-clerical attire to fit in better with the other staff which Camber would be acquiring with his episcopal office.

Johannes would be remaining with the Michaelines to assist the new vicar general, when his former master left for Grecotha the following week, so Guaire temporarily functioned as valet as well as dark and factor to the incipient bishop. Nothing more was said about the conversation he and Camber had shared the night before; indeed, it was as if nothing had occurred.

Nor was there reason for Camber to give the matter further thought during the rest of the week. Those others who might have sensed what was developing, had they been able to assemble all the pieces of the mosaic—Joram and Evaine and Rhys—were, themselves, too busy trying to settle Camber's affairs in Caerrorie and get back to the capital by Friday to see the full scope of what was building. On that day, the seven-year-old Davin MacRorie, Camber's grandson and heir, must be formally recognized by the king as the new Earl of Culdi, doing homage for his titles and lands with nearly a score of other nobles, young and old, who had come into their inheritances through the death of predecessors during the recent war.

That, and the feverish collection of such of Camber's important manuscripts and other possessions as he would continue to need, tended to blur the true significance of what was happening at Caerrorie itself. Camber's children noticed but did not react to the growing numbers of mourners who came daily to kneel and pray in the chapel above the MacRorie vaults, where "Camber"

slept beside his long-dead wife and other family; saw but did not comprehend the meaning of the floral and prayer offerings which began to appear in increasing numbers with each day's visitants.

They certainly did not connect these things with the uneasiness which Camber himself had felt as he rode back to Valoret and watched the people's reaction to his funeral cortege. And Cinhil's fleeting glimpse of Camber's face on that night of memory integration was far from any of their thoughts.

And so, alone and on his own in his new role, unknown in his true identity to any person in the castle at Valoret, Camber settled into his new life. He could not know that his tomb in Caerrorie was fast becoming a pilgrimage spot for the faithful of the area; that an embittered king brooded long hours into the night on what he had seen in a vicar general's bedchamber; that a Michaeline knight already fretted under the restriction not to speak of what he thought had happened that night. In temporary and blissful ignorance,

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