Based on "The Chronicles of the Deryni" and "The Histories of King Kelson," by Katherine Kurtz

April, 1125. The Convent of Saint Gersuinda, Gwynedd.

"Te Deum laudamus: te Dominum confitemur.
Te aeternum Patrem omnis terra veneratur."

So. He had survived. She had feared that he would, and yet, she had known that it would be so. Ironic, that she, who alone of the Sisters had secretly hoped that his body would be found broken and mangled on the rocks, was also the only one who had truly expected that he would return. Oh, she had known, somehow. Had known that it would be too wonderful if God had demonstrated that He had turned away from Kelson of Gwynedd. If He had decided to punish the Haldane for destroying her hopes for a free Meara. If He had shown himself to be, at the very least, not the especial protector of the royal house of Gwynedd.

But no. God had tricked her again, raising up her hopes in spite of her better sense, only to dash them as cruelly as possible.

No. She had to acknowledge it, now. In God's eyes, Kelson had been in the right. In God's eyes, she was a sinner and a traitor. In God's eyes, all the deaths of that final Haldane campaign to crush her land fell upon her head. She could not disbelieve it. She knew that she was doomed to hell: although her mind and body might submit to God, her heart was not contrite. God was unjust, if such a thing was possible, and for that thought, she knew, she would burn for all eternity.

If her place and Sicard's had been reversed, she could not help but think, if it had been he who claimed the throne of Meara, they would not have been so harsh. They would have treated with him, perhaps allowed him to hold Meara in fealty of Gwynedd. They would have acknowledged, at least, that two men were needed to make a war, and they would have honored his bravery in making his claim, and his sons' for supporting it in filial obedience. But she was a woman, and so Sicard was weak for being ruled by her. So that was her crime: she had dared to challenge a man's supremacy, and God was punishing her.

He had punished her all along, though she had been too blind to see it. Her beautiful, gentle daughter dead by her son's hand. Her eldest son executed, too, for terrible, dishonorable crimes. Her husband cut down. And, perhaps worst of all, her Judhael, her only last relative, executed summarily for no crime at all but his birth and support of her. Had she not been doing penance throughout that war?

And she had been so sure in the beginning. Sure that God was with her. Meara was not, and had never been Gwynedd land. It was a beautiful country in its own right, with its own culture, its own traditions, its own language. Gwynedd had conquered enough, was rich and powerful enough, that its spurious claim to Meara was doubly invalid. But pride goeth before a fall. For her presumption, God had brought her down, to be a broken, kneeling supplicant before Kelson Haldane. Before all her people, an abject old woman, powerless and pleading for her kinsman's life, and having her object denied. Kelson had even sent her out of Meara. She would never even see her country again, never hear any tongue but the biting, raucous dialect of Gwynedd. And, worst of all, since God seemed now to truly favor the House of Haldane, she ought to be grateful for the mercy she had been shown. She had rebelled against a divinely anointed king, countenanced the judicial murder of a bishop of God. By any law, she deserved death.

That was her punishment: to live out her life humbly in her enemies' debt, and in the shadow of the God whom she had so offended. And yet, God would not soften her heart, would not give her the grace to follow His dictate to "Love thine enemy." Instead, He mocked her enforced penance, withholding from her heart the true contrition that would expiate her sins. Because she was not contrite. Her country had not been meant to be subject to another! In her dreams, a proud young Mearan on a noble stallion swept her from the cold cloister and brought her triumphantly home...

But it would not be. It was hopeless! Hopeless! And it was all gone. All of her family, all her people, her country, her life... All gone.

And here, under the stiff religious Rule, she would find no sympathy. The Sisters hailed from the families of stalwart vassals of Gwynedd; Abbess Cecilia had lost a beloved brother in Kelson's Mearan Campaign. And they had all heard that stern denunciation by which she bore the blame for every death of that war. The little novices stared at the old woman whom they had surely heard tell as a monstrous Jezebel, the object of curses and obscenities in their fathers' halls. The Sisters were cold, and barely disguised their unchristian glee as she, once so proud as to rebel against their king, submitted to the thousand indignities of the penitent's life. Hers was the lowest place at the board and the thinnest, coarsest habit. Her daily lot was that which was reserved for special and egregious infractions of the others: to prostrate herself in the chapel archway before and after every Office and so bear the physical chastisement of rest of the convent.

A few of the Sisters gave her forced charity, but she could tell that their concern was not genuine. While they prayed with her, they were prying into her face, trying to find something about which to gossip. And she could not truly confide in the priest in any meaningful way. He would not comfort her, and he could not absolve her of sins for which she felt no contrition. She doubted that he even kept her blasphemous confessions close, in spite of his holy charge (he was surely a tool of the Haldane), but she did not care about that. Let them know. It would not make her fate any worse. They could not humiliate her more than they had. God would not care either. He had amply demonstrated that.

As the Te Deum was sung, and old Father Aloysius led the convent in thanking the Lord for His deliverance of their young earthly king, glittering tears ran down the Sisters' cheeks. Tears of joy from most, but tears of mourning from Sister Magdelena, once Caitrin, Queen of Meara.

Revised 24-2-05, 6-6-05