CHAPTER SIXTEEN
He hath also prepared for him the instruments of death; he ordaineth his arrows against the persecutors.
“So, are you going to execute him or not?” Sicard of Meara asked, buckling a gorget at his throat as a squire adjusted steel greaves and tassets on his legs.
Loris, a white cope over his war harness, flicked the end of a riding crop against his armored thigh in annoyance and glanced down at the prisoner still spread-eagled on the floor. Duncan lay in a faint, his breathing labored and shallow, bloody hands and feet twitching occasionally in their shackles, his bare chest crisscrossed with welts from Loris’ whip. Gorony sat on a low stool near the prisoner’s head and watched for signs of returning consciousness. Neither blood nor sweat nor even smudge of dust from the night’s work marred the snowy livery he wore over his armor.
“What’s the matter, Sicard?” Loris said. “Have you no stomach for the Lord’s work? The man is a heretic.”
“Well, burn him and be done with it, then.”
“I need his confession first.”
Snorting, Sicard took the sheathed sword his squire offered and thrust it into a hanger at his waist, dismissing the lad with a curt nod.
“Listen to me, Archbishop,” he said, when the boy had gone. “You may know about saving souls, but I know about saving lives.”
“I see only one life in the balance here,” Loris replied. “What does it matter to you whether he burns now or this evening?”
“It matters because I have the entire Mearan army camped outside this tent,” Sicard said. “My wife—my queen—entrusted them to me, to use in the cause of Mearan victory. McLain’s men may be scattered and demoralized for the moment, but they are not stupid. They know where we are, and they know we have their duke. Give them time, and they’ll attempt a rescue, even if they can’t possibly hope to succeed.”
“If they can’t possibly hope to succeed, then why do you fret?” Loris countered. “Have faith.”
“I’ll have faith when I know where Kelson and his army are!”
“We’ll find out.”
“Yes, but when?” Sicard slapped a mailed gauntlet against his thigh with a clash of metal links against plate as he glared down at the motionless Duncan. “Why hasn’t he broken? That Deryni drug was supposed to make him talk.”
“His will is strong, my lord,” Gorony murmured. “Sometimes the drug alone is not sufficient. But he will tell us what we want to know.”
“Easy to say, Monsignor. But I need some answers now.”
“There are more stringent measures I could take,” Gorony suggested.
“Aye, and with no more useful results.”
“Do you question my methods, my lord?”
Sicard set his fists on his hips in a gesture of distaste and turned slightly away.
“I don’t like torturing priests,” he murmured.
“Ah, but executing them is quite another matter, isn’t it?” Loris interjected smoothly. “Tell me, do you recall whether Henry Istelyn suffered any torture before his execution?”
Bristling, Sicard drew himself up self-righteously.
“Henry Istelyn was hanged, drawn, and quartered because, in his secular capacity, he was a traitor to Meara,” he replied. “His sentence did not reflect upon his sacred office as priest and bishop.”
Loris permitted himself a chill smile. “Then, think of McLain’s secular office as Duke of Cassan and Earl of Kierney, a prisoner of war with valuable information needful of extraction,” he soothed. “So far as I am concerned, he is no longer even a priest, much less a bishop.”
“You know I cannot argue the fine points of canon law with you,” Sicard muttered. “I do not know what makes a bishop in the sacred sense. But this I know: a priest is a priest forever! At his ordination, his hands are consecrated for the purpose of holding the Body of Our Lord. Look what you’ve done to his hands!”
“Deryni hands!” Loris spat. “Hands that have profaned the blessed Sacraments every time he dared to offer Mass. Do not presume to lecture me regarding the proper treatment of Deryni, Sicard!”
Duncan, drifting feverishly at the brink of returning consciousness, moaned aloud as Loris punctuated his words with a cut of his whip across the already welted chest. The pain reverberated up and down his body in a wave of fire and chill dread.
He tried to push himself back down into the blessed blackness where he did not hurt, but full awareness welled and flooded back upon him in a rush of old pain, throbbing in his hands and feet. The hard edge of psychic distortion from the last dose of merasha had waned but little—certainly not enough to give him any real measure of control.
He did not open his eyes. But even as he sensed Loris bending closer to look at him, and someone else waiting near his head, any chance of maintaining the pretense of unconsciousness was obliterated by the sharp pressure of a boot compressing his wounded right hand against the dirt beneath it—not hard, but it did not need to be. His groan, as he curled to the limits of his bonds in an effort to evade the torment, was almost a sob.
“He’s coming around, Excellency,” Gorony murmured, from close beside Duncan’s left ear.
Loris snorted and moved back, and the pain in Duncan’s hand receded almost immediately to a dull throb.
“Amazing how much pain can be bought from the tip of a finger—even in so willful and obdurate a priest as our Duncan. Pay attention, McLain.”
Loris underlined the order with another cut of his whip across Duncan’s chest, and Duncan gasped and opened his eyes. He was burning with thirst, his throat so parched and swollen that he might almost have welcomed even another draught of merasha—for they had given him nothing else to drink since his capture.
“So, you have returned to us,” Loris said, smiling with satisfaction. “You really must try to be more attentive. Can it be that you do not appreciate Monsignor Gorony’s ministrations?”
Duncan only dragged his swollen tongue across dry lips and turned his head aside, bracing for Loris’ next blow.
“Why, Father,” Loris purred. “You clearly do not yet understand. What matters a man’s body if his soul be damned?”
The end of the whip only tapped lightly against one raw fingertip, but the leather might as well have been red-hot steel, for the agony it produced. Duncan clenched his teeth against the pain, but he would not let himself cry out. Suddenly the lash flicked hard against his bare chest, raising yet another welt among the dozens already there, and he did let out a gasp at that.
“Answer me,” Loris said sharply. “I am doing this for the good of your soul, not my own.”
“A noble sentiment,” Duncan whispered, almost managing a wry smile. “From a most noble and godly man.”
The whip snapped across his face this time, laying open a bloody split in his lower lip, but Duncan was already braced, and only grunted at the blow.
“I believe I have just lost patience with you, Deryni!” Loris muttered through clenched teeth. “I wonder what kind of song you will sing when you taste a proper lash. Your tongue needs discipline as well. Gorony?”
Gorony rose immediately and disappeared to another part of the tent, where Duncan could not see, and for just an instant, he feared a literal fulfillment of the threat: that Loris meant to have his tongue cut out. Gorony would do it, too, if Loris ordered it.
But it was a cup, not a knife, that Gorony brought back with him: more merasha, then. God, how they must fear him, to risk another dose so soon.
He did not even try to resist as Gorony raised his head and put the cup to his lips. Whether he fought or not, they would get it down him eventually; struggling would only compound his discomfort. And perhaps they would miscalculate and overdose him. At worst, the drug’s disruptive effect might help him blunt the other pain.
He swallowed thirstily, almost welcoming the nausea and vertigo the drug produced. Even this tortured near-oblivion of mind was preferable to what they were doing to the rest of his body. And if they burned him …
“Bring him,” Loris said.
They left the shackles dangling from his wrists and ankles even when they unpegged the chains that had held him to the ground. Duncan groaned as guards wrenched him to his feet and led him, staggering, from the tent, Loris and Gorony following with a tight-lipped Sicard.
He saw the stake almost at once. They had set it atop a little hillock in the center of the camp, but a short distance from Loris’ tent. Silhouetted against the early morning sky, it seemed hardly imposing enough to promise so horrible a death as Duncan knew awaited him—only a piece of a tree trunk, roughly hewn, with even a few branches still spiking from the top.
He stared at it in dread fascination as they drew him toward it, ignoring the jeers and taunts of Loris’ troops drawn up to witness his humiliation, as he stumbled along a gauntlet of staring, hissing soldiers who wore a blue cross on their pure white surcoats. They did him no physical harm, but he could feel their hatred burning against his flesh in anticipation of the flames that soon would seek his life. Beyond the episcopal knights and men-at-arms, the massed troops of the Mearan army stretched as far as the eye could see, most of the signs of the night’s camp already gone. The nervous Sicard obviously was preparing to move out as soon as Duncan’s death was accomplished.
The chains on his ankles dragged at him with every agonizing step; his raw and bloody toes throbbed, making of the short journey to the stake his own personal Calvary, like walking on flames already. He found himself wondering whether the Christ had found His last journey so difficult. It all seemed just a little unreal.
The chains hanging from the stake were real enough, however—and the piles of faggots stacked neatly around the base, with only a narrow passageway left for him and his guards to stumble through. To either side of the stake, stripped to the waist, two soldiers waited with leather scourges, the knotted thongs moving restlessly in their hands, corded muscles rippling in brawny shoulders and chests.
He expected and received no mercy as his guards yanked him across the final steps and, without ceremony, drew his arms around the stake in a rough embrace, locking his wrists a little above head-height. Ragged chunks of bark and stubs of branches dug painfully into his chest; and when he tried to shift his stance a little wider-splayed to brace himself against the scourge, he jammed a nailless toe against a piece of kindling with such force that his eyes watered and he nearly fainted from the pain.
When he had mastered himself again, he opened his eyes to see Gorony’s face only inches from his, the priest’s hands slowly turning the handle of one of the scourges between them.
“Behold, the instrument of your salvation,” he heard Gorony murmur, through the pain throbbing in hands and feet.
He flinched as the priest flicked the knotted thongs lightly across his bare shoulder, feeling the dread crawl in his mind despite his intention that he should not allow Gorony that satisfaction.
“Nay, do not shrink from your salvation,” Gorony went on, his voice obscene in the pleasure it conveyed at another’s suffering. “You must let each stroke drive the evil from you, that your death may be an expiation of your many sins.”
When Duncan only turned his face away, welcoming the rough caress of the bark against his cheek, he could sense Gorony’s disappointment. Battling the merasha-enhanced despair beginning to well in his mind, he tried to distance himself from what was about to happen. His torturers spent what seemed like hours testing their scourges on the ground behind him, making sure he heard the whistle of the leather rending the air and the dead snap the weighted thongs made as they struck the ground, but all too soon they paused.
Only a prior scourging could have prepared him for what came next. Even though he was expecting it, the first actual stroke of the lash caught him totally unready for the agony it produced. Biting back his first cry of pain and shock, he clenched his fists and tried to grind his raw fingertips against the rough bark of the stake, hoping to dull the new pain with an older, better tolerated one. It did not help.
Each individual thong of the scourge laid a fiery welt across his back, blotting out all other sensory input—and there were two scourgers. His torturers never seemed to tire. After the first half-dozen lashes, blood began to run, mingling with the sweat pouring from his pain-wracked body; and after a few more, time began to blur as well.
He sagged more and more heavily against his chains as the scourging continued, no longer able to see for the pain. His wrists were numb and slick with his blood, but that was as nothing compared to what they were doing to his back. He had heard of men being flayed to the bone by the scourge. Perhaps he would die. Loris would never break his spirit with the scourge, but facing the fire was a different kind of trial.
“He can’t take much more,” he heard Sicard say to Loris, the words only barely filtering through his agony. “Unless, of course, you prefer a cremation to an execution.”
“He is stronger than you think,” came Loris’ cold reply, as another stroke drove Duncan even nearer the brink of blessed oblivion. “Still, I would not cheat the fire of its living sacrifice. Gorony?”
The scourging ceased. As the half-fainting Duncan stirred feebly, trying to get his feet under him again, rough hands seized his biceps and supported him while someone unlocked his wrists. His hands throbbed worse than before as circulation returned, but when they turned him and set his back hard against the stake, stretching his arms behind him to embrace its rough surface against his flayed flesh, he knew that all his previous pain had been but prelude. The metallic click of the shackles locking around his wrists was underlined by the clank of the chains Gorony then began winding across his chest, binding him to the stake so that even the fire would never release his body from the fate Loris had determined should be his. He tried to ride with the pain, tried to will himself to succumb to it, to pass into blessed unconsciousness, but he lacked sufficient control.
As the men set bundles of faggots closer around his feet, filling in most of the opening they had left for access to the stake, Duncan’s sight grew preternaturally clear. Now there would be no new pain until the flames. Beyond Loris and Gorony, he saw and noted many of the men who had turned against him and the Haldane cause in the past six months: Grigor of Dunlea, a powerful neighbor of the traitor Brice of Trurill and old Caulay MacArdry.
Old Caulay was dead, of course—though he never would have forsaken his oath to the Haldane kings. Loyal and steadfast Caulay, who had raised Dhugal as his own son. Duncan swallowed hard at the realization that he would never see Dhugal again, and prayed that the boy had gotten to safety.
And then there were Tibald MacErskine and Cormac Hamberlyn, two of the border chieftains of his own vassalage who stood to gain by his death—and an outlaw from his own border regions called O Daire.
And Sicard MacArdry, kinsman to his son and husband of his enemy, and Kelson’s enemy, standing with armored forearms crossed on his chest and a look of distaste on his bearded face.
Fire caught Duncan’s attention then, far out at the periphery of his vision—a torch in the hands of a cowled man approaching slowly from the direction of Loris’ tent. Against his will, Duncan found his eyes locking on the flame in horrid fascination, unable to look away even when the man passed the torch to Loris’ gloved hand.
An awed hush fell upon the assembly then, for it was not often that the Church burned a priest and bishop, though Deryni aplenty had burned in the past. The silence was so profound that Duncan could hear the hiss and crackle of the burning brand as Loris approached, holding the torch aloft like the crozier that was his usual accoutrement. The prelate’s cross on his breast reflected both heat and light as he stopped within an arm’s length of his prisoner and looked him up and down.
“Well, well, dear Duncan, we have come to an ending at last, haven’t we?” he said, so softly that only Duncan could hear him. “It is not yet too late to confess your sins, you know. I still can save you.”
Duncan shook his head carefully.
“I have nothing to say to you.”
“Ah, then you prefer to go to your death unshriven and excommunicate,” Loris said, raising an eyebrow in mocking agreement. “I had hoped that mortification of the flesh might help you to master your pride and to repent.” His expression hardened. “Tell me, Deryni, have you ever seen a man burn?”
Duncan shivered despite the heat of the day and the menace of the flame in Loris’ hand, but he was determined not to allow his tormentor the satisfaction of any further response. Turning his head slightly away, he raised his gaze to the line of sun-glazed hills stretched across the eastern horizon. The bright rim of the rising sun dazzled his eyes as he fixed his attention on it, helping him turn his mind away from awful memories and the knowledge of what lay ahead for him.
I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help, he thought dully.
“Well, I can tell you that burning is not a pleasant way to die,” Loris went on. “And I can make it less pleasant, still. You will note that the kindling is set to burn very slowly, giving your body ample time to taste the full torment of these earthly flames before your soul must face the flames of Hell. It will be more terrible than you can even contemplate. But I could be merciful.…”
Duncan swallowed dry-mouthed and closed his eyes briefly, but the afterimage of the sun-rim persisted, presaging the fire to come, and he shifted back to physical vision almost immediately.
My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth.…
“Yes, I could be merciful,” Loris repeated. “If you will recant your heresies, and denounce your cursed Deryni powers, I could see that the fire is quick and hot. And for the additional favor of giving me the information I desire on Kelson’s whereabouts, I could be more merciful still.”
As he glanced back at the men knotted around Sicard and gave a nod, Tibald MacErskine drew his dirk. The harsh rasp of metal against metal as it left the sheath called to Duncan, promising release, but he knew he dared not buy his body’s ease at the cost of betrayal, either of his own conscience or of the faith he kept and would always keep with his king.
“Look you. His blade is sharp,” Loris whispered, as Tibald came to join them. “See how it flashes in the sun, in the light of the flame.…”
As Tibald brought the blade to eye level before him and turned it, smiling obscenely, Duncan found himself watching with horrible fascination, squinting as the torchlight dazzled his sight.
“Yes, the fire is hot, but the release of steel is sweet,” Loris whispered, taking the weapon in his own free hand.
As he set it gently against Duncan’s throat, letting the flat of the blade lie cool and seductive across the pulse point, Duncan closed his eyes, trembling.
So easy to succumb. So easy.…
“It would be very easy, Duncan,” Loris’ voice purred on. “Very little pain. Far less than you have already suffered. They say that a tiny nick, just here, behind the ear.…”
He felt the momentary pressure of the metal like a caress, though flat-bladed still, but even that was withdrawn before he could have leaned into it. The heat of the torch beat upon his closed eyelids, leaving the brief memory of the cool blade the sweeter still.
Oh, blessed Jesu, have pity on Your servant! came his quick and desperate prayer.
“What, so eager?” Loris whispered, stroking the flat of the blade across his throat again. “Ah, but it would be a welcome exchange, wouldn’t it, Duncan? The quick mercy of the blade balanced against the fire. Why, even in your weakened state, you could surely manage that, before the flames reached you. If you tell me what I wish to know, I will give you your mercy.”
YOU could manage.…
Duncan forced his eyes to open as the trap suddenly became apparent, even to his dulled senses. Loris had tried to lure him to a far more lasting torment than the fire. It was not the coup de grâce Loris offered him—the stroke of mercy, to spare the recipient further agony. The alternative Loris offered to death by fire was death by Duncan’s own hand—which would carry far heavier consequences than mere death of his body when he stood before God’s judgment in the hereafter.
Nor, even if Duncan were fool enough to accept the terms, was there any guarantee that Loris would keep his part of the bargain. Did Loris really think he would betray his conscience and his king so that he might be permitted to commit the mortal sin of suicide?
“Ah, so you don’t care for my little offer,” Loris said, shaking his head in mock regret as he gave the dirk back to Tibald. “Well, I don’t suppose I ever really thought you would. I do have a care for your soul, though—if Deryni even have souls, of course. And even if suicide is not among your faults, I am sure you will welcome the time to contemplate your other sins. The fire will take a long time to kill you.
“And that is all to the good of your immortal soul,” he went on, as he began slowly backing off. “Your body, of course—”
He gestured with the torch, the fire passing so near a bit of brush-kindling that Duncan caught his breath in horror.
“But, you have surely seen others purified by the flame,” Loris continued. “The blackened, twisted forms—the hands contorted into claws as the heat contracts the muscles. Of course, you may be dead by the time that begins to happen.…”
Duncan’s imagination began filling in its own gruesome details long before Loris reached the edge of the kindling and his voice fell silent. As the fiery torch sank lower and lower in Loris’ hand, finally setting the first edges of brush alight, a roar went up from the watching men. They rattled swords and spears against shields in approval as Loris trailed the torch slowly around the outer perimeter and the flames spread to follow in his wake.
All but despairing, Duncan wrenched his gaze above the growing flames and concentrated on the hills beyond, praying that he might be granted the grace to die as well as Henry Istelyn—steadfast and true, faithful unto death to himself, his king, and his God.
Judge me, O Lord; for I have walked in mine integrity: I have trusted also in the Lord; therefore I shall not slide. Examine me, O Lord, and prove me; try my reins and my heart.…
And his trying would be ruthless, Duncan knew—deadly, at least to his body. The flames leaped ever higher, beginning to eat toward him, but the heat that drove Loris and his minions back with its intensity would not reach him for some time—perhaps as long as half an hour. Not hot enough to kill, at any rate. He could feel the sting of sweat drenching his lacerated back, streaming down his limbs, but that was as much from his nerves and the beating sun as from the fire.
In thee, O Lord, do I put my trust; let me never be ashamed: deliver me in thy righteousness. Bow down thine ear to me; deliver me speedily.… Into thine hand I commit my spirit: Thou hast redeemed me, O Lord God of truth.…
Beyond the flames, Sicard and his officers began returning to their units and preparing to move out, cavalry and foot bristling with lances and pikes and bows as they formed up, mounted scouts already scattering to the west to reconnoiter.
The camp had nearly disappeared around him, even Loris’ tent all but dismantled as his men packed the canvas onto sumpter mules. Farther out, the white-clad episcopal knights were mounted already, the mettlesome battle chargers fidgeting and anxious at the flames leaping up ever stronger around the condemned Duke of Cassan.
I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.… The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.…
So rapt was Duncan in his devotion that he did not even notice, at first, that the light of the eastern sky had begun to reflect from the points of hundreds of lances, or that the eastern glare masked the steady approach of Haldane banners.
But Sicard noticed—and Loris. And as their officers began bawling frantic orders to arm and mount, the dust of the Haldane advance roiled on the plain like the coming of an avenging angel.