Ironically, Abyaz’ murder went a long way to vindicate and support his claims to innocence in Jerusalem. Every time he looked in the mirror, he felt himself sinking more and more into a state of depression. His clothes had been altered to fit the smaller frame he wore in Colonel St. John’s body, but he just didn’t have the same charisma as he’d had before. He could still perform the same miracles, but the people didn’t seem to appreciate him as much as before when he had looked more like his grandfather. He would have never believed that a man’s outward appearance could mean so much. But why not? It meant a great deal to him, why not to the people and people… he’d learned, could be very, very fickle. Even the rulers he, or rather Jozsef Daniel, had set in place seemed aloof and unwilling to speak with him. He almost felt like a whore that had been used and dumped.
At times, his frustration erupted into fits of rage wherein he tore about the palace, frightening the servants and causing Ruth to go into hiding in her room. His son, Bari, had witnessed these with a peculiar expression in his dark eyes and he felt that his son watched him with foreign eyes, as if waiting for him to make some fatal mistake. His son! The boy continued to grow at an alarming rate. He was almost as big as his father now and would soon be taller and heavier than him. Much like Jozsef Daniel. Much like Jozsef Daniel and Omar, the Prophet. Omar, the Prophet. A personage that had come to be an entirely different entity outside himself in his own mind!
Omar had been thinking about simply abandoning this world and going to live with his grandmother in the Hesperides. It would have made his father happy, but Ruth had refused when he had hinted if they were to go there, he would again resume his former image. She had actually told him that she preferred him in his changed state because of the abuse she had received from Jozsef Daniel. But then he had tried to kiss her and she had, again, cringed away from him. It had been his last attempt. She didn’t want him as he was and she didn’t want him as he had been.
If he left, he would leave alone… no, not alone. He would have to take Bari with him, kicking and screaming if necessary. He could not leave that one loose in this world. He fully intended to ask his father about it, seek his advice and possibly his help in the matter at the first opportunity. It seemed strange to him all of his dreams could have so easily disappeared without even a bang. There was one final murmur of hope: joining his grandfather’s Order, had crossed his mind. He knew that Mark Ramsay would welcome him with open arms. At the thought of his grandfather, he frowned.
That was it! Very faint, but he could sense that his grandfather was in trouble. Somewhere, somehow.
“I’m going up to the roof,” he told Ruth.
“I’ll see you in the morning then. Be careful, my love,” she told him and squeezed his hand lightly. It was the closest thing to intimate contact they had these days and it was no more than one would do for a stranger in the streets or a dying man at the free clinic.
“Of course.” He turned away quickly and wiped the tear from his face.
As soon as he was out of sight, his son opened the door and stepped inside the drawing room his mother and father shared. His mother was bending over the sofa, gathering her books and magazines.
“Mother!” he said cheerfully as he crossed the room to embrace her warmly. “I was just on my way down to the kitchen for a midnight snack and I saw your light on. Are you all right?”
“I’m fine, Bari.” Ruth smiled at him.
“He hasn’t been bothering you again, has he?” Bari raised one eyebrow.
“Oh, no, Bambino.” She shook her head. “He’s going up to the roof. He’s worried about something.”
“Really?” Bari took her arm. “Won’t you come downstairs with me? I don’t like being in this big old place all alone at night. It reminds me of when I had to live here without you.”
“I’m sorry.” She frowned and patted her son’s arm. He looked so much like her husband once had. Very handsome, but he had dark eyes like Lucio and curly hair as well. It was almost as if he had taken the best attributes of his father and the Golden Eagle and combined them in a wonderful way, but, of course, he could not really look like Lucio. Those were her dark eyes and curly hair, but the effect was startling. She had gotten over her fear of him and had accepted the fact he would never be her little bambino, but she was very proud of him now. He was highly intelligent, thoughtful and quiet. His manners were impeccable and his gentleness profound. He reminded her of what Omar had once been.
“Now, tell me what is bothering Father.” He guided her toward the door. “Perhaps I can help him if I know what is wrong. Is he still mad at you for not sharing his bed?”
“Now, Bari! You should not be thinking about such things. It isn’t proper,” she admonished him and wished that she had not confessed this thing to him. She was his mother. He was her son. It was not proper for them to discuss such a topic, but…
“Mother, please.” He smiled. “I’m a big boy and anything that bothers you, bothers me. He should understand. He is very lucky to have you with him. Any other woman would have left him.”
“I would never do that,” she said. “It was not his fault and he has been very good to me.”
“Has he?” Bari asked her and narrowed his dark eyes as he looked up at the crystal fixtures above the stairs.
“Of course!”
“Has he been good to you lately?”
“Well… perhaps not lately, but he loves me, I know.”
“Do you? Do you really know? How do you know when someone loves you?” he asked as they stepped into the grand foyer and turned back toward the kitchen. “I would like to know.”
“Well, Bambino…” She shrugged. “You just know. The way they look at you and the things they say. The way they touch you. Like a pat on the hand or a hug at just the right moment. There is just something there.”
“Like this?” He squeezed her arm lightly and then ran his hand over hers. “You have such soft skin, Mother.”
“Yes, like that.” She nodded. “When people love each other, they like to show it. Holding hands, that sort of thing. Hugging and kissing. Snuggling they call it in America. I like that word.” She giggled. “We did a lot of snuggling in Sicily.”
“Who did? You and Father?” he asked and held open one of the swinging doors leading through the butler’s pantry.
“No.” She walked ahead of him, flipping on the lights as she went. “My family. My brothers. We used to hug each other even when we had been apart only a few days. And when we were sitting around the fire or watching television, we used to lean on each other like a litter of kittens.”
“Your brothers?” He followed very close behind her. “You had many brothers?”
“Yes and they were terrible.” She laughed. “But I loved them dearly and they loved me.”
“But they were terrible?” he sounded confused.
“Yes, but brothers always are. They were too protective of their only little sister.” She pushed open the door to the kitchen.
“You miss them?”
“Of course.”
“Will I ever have a brother?” he asked her and caught her arm, stopping her.
“Oh!” She looked up at him in surprise. “I don’t know. I mean…”
“If you never sleep with my father, I will never have brothers,” he said and his expression changed.
“But you said…” she faltered and looked at him closely. A shiver coursed up her spine.
“I would like to have a brother,” he told her in a low voice.
“Bari!” She backed away from him. “It isn’t done like that. I mean you can’t ask your mother to have a baby… I mean… It is not proper. You are too old for such things.”
“What would be proper?” he asked and raised both eyebrows as a slow smile spread across his face. “Should I ask my father?”
“No!” She shook her head and took another step backwards. “He would be… that would be… It would not be right.”
“Are you afra
id of me still?”
“No, of course not,” she lied as another chill shook her. She looked about the deserted kitchen. “What would you like for a snack, Bari? I’ll fix it for you. I used to be a good cook.”
She bumped into the refrigerator and turned around, pulling one of the heavy doors open.
He caught her arm and turned her to face him.
“Ruth!” He leaned toward her and placed his lips very close to her ear. “You remember me, don’t you? You love me, don’t you?” He stepped back and took both of her hands in his. His voice had changed. The tone and sound tugged at her ears and her heart. Her brain struggled to place the voice.
“Of course.” She stared into his eyes.
“Your son would like to have a brother, la cara mia. What is wrong with that?” he asked her. “You wanted more children. You told me that you wanted many children, that you loved children.”
“I don’t know… I don’t remember…” She frowned and shook her head slightly.
“What is the problem, la mia dolce? Tell me what is bothering you and I’ll take care of it.”
He kissed her lightly on the lips and she was no longer with her son, but with her first and only love, Lucio Dambretti.
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“This is war!” The Grand Master slammed his big fist on the council table. “He thinks he will frighten me?!”
“He has frightened us!” Barry told him. “Do you think I would dare bring Rachel back here with this danger?”
“Rachel?!” D’Brouchart frowned at him. His face was red and his eyes blazed. “My granddaughter? Of course not!”
“And Orri?” Louis spoke up from the end of the table. He had a bandage on his face and another on his exposed forearm. “We cannot bring them back here. We cannot protect them. If they had been here, who knows what would have happened? We should have never come back here. We should have stayed in Scotland. At least Brother Ramsay could protect us. He protected us before.”
“Protect you?!” D’Brouchart stood up, slamming his chair against the wall. His valet, Allan Sharpe, grabbed the chair and brought it back to him. Peter Rushkin placed one hand on the Grand Master’s arm to steady him as he sat down. “You both sound like old women. By God, you are Knights of the Council. You will stand up and fight like men. I told you your families would be second to the needs of the Order and the Order is second only to God.”
“We fought like men, Your Grace,” Lavon de Bleu objected to the insult. “And some of us died like sheep at the slaughter. Those boys were innocent! They never knew what happened to them. What about that? How can we live with ourselves when children die for us?”
“They did not die for us!” Edgard dropped his head and closed his eyes tightly. “They died for the Order!”
“They were children,” Louis echoed Lavon’s words.
The deaths of the students had almost killed him. He had become much more sensitive to such things since his own son had been born. He had seen many, many children die in his lifetime. It had never been very pretty, but now it had a new meaning to him. Thaddeus had been in the same dorm where the two boys had died. It could very well have been his own son that he was now mourning. “We cannot afford to keep them here as long as this man is up in arms against us. If he can do this, he can do anything. What is it exactly, that lies between you and this Eduord de Goth? I know that you have his sister in custody, but it would hardly seem wise for him to inflict such grievous injuries on us with his sister’s life at stake. What does he want, Sir?”
“That is quite obvious,” Lavon interjected. “He wants something from us other than his sister. He already has the Sangreal. Perhaps he wants another treasure? The Ark, perhaps? Something else?”
Edgard’s head popped up and he glared at the young French Knight.
“What do you know of the Sangreal?” he asked.
“Plenty!” Lavon slapped a folder of computer printouts on the table and slid them over the sleek surface to the Grand Master. “Perhaps you can finish filling in the blanks for us… your Brothers.”
Edgard looked at Lavon and then Louis and finally Barry. They stared at him dolefully.
“You do not have to answer to them, Your Grace,” Peter said quietly. “You are the Master.”
“We do not request him to answer to us, Brother,” Christopher Stewart, Knight of the Holy City spoke up. “We simply would request that he respect us enough and… trust us… enough to tell us…what is going on?” The young Knight raised his dark brows at the Master. Never would he have thought to be challenging the formidable Grand Master of the Order in such a manner. He half expected to be struck dead. “No disrespect is intended what-so-ever, but I know that if my former Master, Sir Ramsay, was here, he would explain this to us.”
D’Brouchart turned his eyes on his grandsons, Izzy and Philip d’Ornan, Knights of the Throne and the Sword, respectively, who also sat in silence at the table with them. At the back of the room were his own apprentice and grandson, Bartholomew and his grandson and Simon’s apprentice, Andrew, sitting next to each other. Andrew still exhibited tell-tale signs of the pain he had involuntarily suffered when his father had rendered the healing right to the Knight of the Golden Eagle. His eyes were still smudged with black circles and his normally rosy cheeks were pale and sunken.
Once again, Edgard d’Brouchart felt as if the weight of the world rested on his shoulders and perhaps, in a sense, it did. Everyone in this room had become a part of the fulfillment of a great prophecy. Everyone of them could claim to be descended from some mystical or royal blood or both with the exception of Vallen Martin and he was sure that if he were to investigate Vallen’s background more thoroughly, he would find something that connected him to this place and this time.
The Grand Master let out a long sigh and then closed his eyes again briefly before speaking in a calmer fashion.
“I believe we should call Reuben home to the Isle of Ramsay, at least.” He looked at Izzy and Philip. “If you two Brothers would take care of the arrangements…”
“Of course, Your Grace!” Izzy’s face lit up. “And the children?”
“What children?” D’Brouchart frowned.
“Reuben’s children.” Philip returned the frown. “His adopted children and his foster children. He can’t just leave them.”
“Oh, yes. Well, he can bring them. It will only be temporary, of course. An extended visit.”
“Yes, Your Grace,” Philip inclined his head slightly.
“And his wife?” Andy spoke up quietly, pushing just a bit.
“His wife?” D’Brouchart glanced at Andrew.
“His wife, Grandfather. I’m sure you remember, Joey, our sister?” The priest eyed him steadily.
“Whatever!” the Grand Master capitulated in aggravation. “I would rather keep the Villa open if at all possible”
“There is very little here by way of valuables.” Barry shrugged. “Perhaps we should all consider an extended visit to St. Patrick’s or Scotland. I should think Sir Dambretti’s call would be enough to warrant such. If what he suspects is true, we are being attacked on two fronts at once and our ramparts are quite thin at this distance. Have you considered that the General might be in league with de Goth? That perhaps even al Sajek, the Mad, might be involved in some way?”
“I will consider it... all of it.” D’Brouchart picked up the folder and began to flip through the massive amount of material that Lavon had collected, along with his notes and those of Christopher Stewart and Izzy d’Ornan, both of whom had been assisting him in his research since Guy de Lyons had fallen.
He stopped at the sight of a scribbled page in the deceased Knight’s own hand. Guy had initialed the bottom of the page and made several notations in the margin.
‘Where do I fit into this?’ The cryptic question screamed at him from beyond the grave. Guy had apparently been worried about himself even when he had been working on this assignment. Edgard felt his heart breaking all ove
r again.
Guy did not fit in. He never had. He had none of the lineage that would have given him the Holy Bloodline and he was certainly no relation to the Ramsay clan. Poor Guy! He had figured it out even though he had refused to admit it. Edgard wondered if this revelation had caused de Lyon’s lingering illness to take him faster than would have been expected. There were many such Knights in the annals of the Order. Many had come and gone. William Montague. Hugh de Champagne. James Argonne. Konrad Von Hetz, the elder. Sir Guillaume Boniface. Henri Guyot. Gerard de Guinnes. Only Thomas Beaujold and Philip Cambrique had been of the Merovingian descent. Their loss had pained the Grand Master greatly. Out of all the Knights now left to the Order, all were either descended of the line of Clovis I, King of the Franks or directly related to Mark Ramsay. The only exception was Lucio Dambretti. His lineage was slightly different, but connected all the same to Edgard d’Brouchart.
“If you gentlemen would allow me to look over this in private, we will meet again tomorrow… this afternoon and I will do my best to answer your questions.” The big man stood up and wiped at the tears that threatened to pour from his eyes. Tears of anger, frustration and self-pity. For once, he thought he might be feeling a tiny bit of the remorse Mark Andrew had expressed to him once in a moment of weakness. The meeting was adjourned.
“Have we heard from du Morte?” the Grand Master asked Peter Rushkin, his chaplain brother as they exited the Council Room behind the others.
“No, Your Grace. I would hope that no news is good news.”
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Thoth, the Atlantean Page 32
