The Bastard Prince Read Free

who stood in his way. In the last decade, the Primate of All Gwynedd had become the single most powerful man in the kingdom.
    â€œThis is damnably inconvenient, if it is the challenge,” Hubert muttered sullenly. “ Damn , why couldn’t they have waited even another year? A second son would make all the difference.”
    â€œYou’re assuming that the queen carries another son and not a daughter,” said the archbishop’s elder brother, Lord Manfred MacInnis, seated across from Hubert. He was a beefy, red-faced man in his mid-fifties, muscled where Hubert was merely fat, his sunburned hands scarred and callused from years of wielding a sword. “I wouldn’t worry so much about potential heirs as I would about the man who wears the crown right now. If this is the challenge we’ve been dreading, ’tis we and the present king who will have to meet it. And if he can’t do that, not even another prince will be enough to ensure the continuance of the Haldane line in power—and us as the power behind the throne.”
    It was no more than a simple statement of fact. The men seated around the table, the core of the Royal Council of Gwynedd, had been virtual rulers of Gwynedd for six years now, since plotting the slaying of the sixteen-year-old King Javan Haldane in an “ambush” far to the north—blamed on Deryni dissidents—and simultaneously masterminding the coup that put his brother, Rhys Michael, on Gwynedd’s throne, though king only in name.
    The cost had come high, for the hollow crown this youngest Haldane prince had never sought. Not alone had he lost a beloved brother and king, but the shock of the sudden and brutal slayings surrounding the coup at Rhemuth had caused his young wife to miscarry of their first child—a supreme irony, for eventual control of an underage Haldane heir had been a large part of the ultimate purpose behind the coup.
    The new king had not truly comprehended the scope of his captors’ ambitions in the beginning. It was horror enough that he must fall under their control. Drugged nearly to senselessness during the coup itself, he had been kept drug-blurred for some months thereafter, all through the public spectacle of his brother’s burial and then the sham of his own coronation.
    Only when he had been safely crowned did they make their intentions clear—and underlined their demands with threats of the most abhorrent nature concerning the fate of his queen if he did not comply. He had been spared to be a puppet king and to breed Haldane princes who, in due course, would fall totally under the sway of the great lords—and under the sway of regents, if their father made himself sufficiently troublesome that he must be eliminated before a tame heir came of age.
    Fortunately for all concerned, especially the king, the prospect of another regicide became less and less likely as the first few months passed. Though dispirited at first, the new king gradually seemed to become reconciled to the inevitability of his situation, allowing himself to be shaped as the docile and biddable figurehead they required.
    Compliance slowly bought small indulgences. Once the king ceased to be argumentative or to display stubborn flashes of independent thinking, permission was granted for him to attend routine meetings of the council. A satisfactory history of behavior at council meetings earned him the privilege of presiding over formal courts, though always closely attended and working from a carefully rehearsed script. Very occasionally, the queen and later their young son were allowed to appear at his side on state occasions. After the first year or so, when it appeared that he had accepted the restrictions placed upon him and decided to make the most of royal privilege, they had even allowed him to resume his training in arms, against just such a threat as now seemed to be materializing. The queen’s new pregnancy seemed to