“Use it!”
“Or perhaps a sleeping potion,” she said, ignoring him. “Much more ladylike, don’t you think? I have this hollow reed I can hide in my hand. With a puff of air from my mouth, a small dart flies forth, tipped with the potion. Just a scratch from this dart and a man falls as if struck dead. It appears to be magic and will terrify those still standing. I have used this before.”
“The potion, then!” To Brin, the five men seemed as menacing as an entire army. “Use the potion!”
She reached into her cloak. “I think not.”
“Then the black exploding powder. They will be upon us soon.”
“No,” she said. “I prefer the most powerful weapon of all. Wits.”
“Excellent,” Brin said, slumping his shoulders in resignation. “We shall flay them with our wits. Most probably they will flee for their lives.”
“Actually,” Rachel answered, “despite your mocking tone, I believe they will.”
Rachel pulled a small pouch out of the bag beneath her cloak.
“Turn with me, away from them,” she instructed Brin. As he did, she opened the top of the pouch and poured red powder into her hand.
“Bring your face to my hand,” she told Brin.
“What?”
“Step closer.”
As he did, she brought her open hand up to his nose, so that the tips of her fingers almost touched his face.
“Do you see anything in this powder?” she asked.
Brin almost crossed his eyes to focus, so close was it to him. The powder was fine, like dust.
“I cannot see anything but —”
With a sudden and unexpected breath, she blew the powder into his eyes.
The blinding pain staggered him. He reached up to rub his stinging eyes. She grabbed his wrists and blocked his efforts.
“Quiet,” she commanded. “Let the powder do its work.”
“Have you lost your mind?” he snarled, yanking his wrists away. “I am not the one about to attack! Why did you—”
A sneeze took him, a sneeze of such proportion he almost lost his balance. Then another sneeze. Yet one more.
His eyes began to water so badly that tears stream down his face. A few seconds later, his nose ran too.
More sneezing took him. He could hardly find breath. The next minutes passed as hours. Rachel would not let him wipe away the tears and mucus which flowed from his eyes and nose.
Finally, between sneezes, he saw that the bandits had arrived and stood less than ten paces away. But he could not see them clearly. The flood of tears blurred what he could see of them.
“Help us,” croaked Rachel. “Good men, please help us!”
Help, wondered Brin. When men joined together like this, it was not to help those they found alone.
Brin sneezed, widely spraying the contents of his nose.
“We only need a little food,” Rachel pleaded in a screeching voice. “Our only way of life is to beg, and the last town sent us away. How can we beg unless we are among people?”
The bandits did not move closer.
“You kind souls are the only ones not to show fear of my husband,” Rachel said in her wavering voice. “He does not have the plague. I promise. They were wrong to send us away.”
“Plague?” This uncertain question came from one of the bandits. Brin could not decide which, for again a sneezing fit took him.
“Do not be deceived by the red of his face,” Rachel said, desperation in her voice. “It is not the fever of Black Death. He is in great health.”
“Black Death?” another echoed.
Brin coughed and sneezed.
“Can you spare us anything?” she asked. She wobbled on her cane toward them. “Please, just give me…”
Through the blur of his tears, Brin saw them edge away.
“Don’t leave,” she cried. “Come closer, not farther. Some bread, some coin - that is all I ask.”
As one body, all five men turned. They fell over themselves in their scramble to run. Their footsteps clattered on the cobblestone, rapidly growing farther away.
“Did I not tell you?” Rachel asked in merry tones. “They flee for their lives. Already they are almost out of sight.”
Moments later, Brin felt hands on his face as Rachel gently placed a cloth on his nose and eyes.
“Take this,” she said. “Wipe away those tears. Soon the effects of the powder will pass.”
Brin dropped the cloth. He spun and began walking down the hill.
“Keep it,” he said in forceful tones. “Keep your black powder and your potions. Keep your tricks and disguises.”
“Brin!” She hurried after him.
“What you did was not right,” he said, anger obvious in every stride.
“I did not lie,” she protested, hard-pressed to stay with him. “I told them you were in good health. I am not to blame that they assumed you carried the plague.”
“What was not right was how you treated me,” he said. “From the moment I met your brother until now, you both have treated me like a child, teasing me with the promise of secrets, herding me like you would a sheep. Now this! Using me with your little trick of powder. Had you asked, I would have agreed. Our lives were in danger. But to blow it in my eyes without warning is…is…is…”
Brin could not remember the last time that anger had taken him to the point of rage. The gypsies had beaten him, taunted him, humiliated him, yet he always bore it with stoic patience. With them, however, he always understood they were clearly against him. Rachel, on the other hand, had pretended something different and then deceived him.
She placed her hand on his arm.
He shook it off. “I will never hit a girl,” he said. “That is the only reason I am not striking you.”
“Please,” she said softly. “We must not fight. As two who share the Grail’s birthright, we must join together in the battle against evil.”
Brin stopped. Grail birthright?
“Tell me everything,” he said. “Now. Upon this hillside. I move no farther unless I hear it all.”
Chapter Fifteen
They moved to sit in the shade of a tree. Brin’s face itched from the waxy disguise, but he remained still. He so wished to know what she might say. It seemed to his ears that each of his heartbeats were separate peals of thunder.
“Let me begin,” she said, “by telling you we have more in common than our birthright. When I hear the children sing the dance of death, I fight to hold back tears. My mother was taken by the Black Death, just like yours. This was just a few years ago when the plague swept through England again.”
Both of them gave respectful silence to her words. It was the single greatest fear in any person’s mind. The bandits had fled from Brin and his red face and hard sneezes for good reason.
Black Death.
It was a plague which struck so quickly that a person might wake sneezing in the morning and be dead by nightfall.
Black Death.
It spread like fire touched to straw. All it took was one child in a family to begin the dreaded coughing, sneezing, and high fever and half, sometimes more, in that family would be dead within a week.
Black Death.
Towns of 500 would be reduced to 300 mourners, with the bodies of the 200 dead stacked in the streets to be burned as soon as the survivors found strength.
Black Death.
It took its name from those who died, their faces purple and dark in agony.
Black Death.
Half the population of Europe dead from two separate epidemics. Brin’s parents taken in the first one in 1348. Rachel’s mother taken in the next, 1361. Dead in the millions upon millions. A disease that struck commoner and royalty alike.
Black Death.
Red, rosy faces pocked with rings of pus. Pockets and sleeves stuffed with flowers, for it was futilely hoped that the scent would ward off the disease. The ashes of bodies burned. And the near certainty of falling down dead once the
disease struck. Children now danced and sang a mockery of the death’s darkness, the dance of death that always brought Rachel near tears as she remembered her dying mother. ‘Ring around the rosy,” the children would say, “pockets full of posy, ashes, ashes, we all fall down.’
The breeze of the hillside passed over them. In the sunshine, which had burned through the earlier haze, the horror of sweeping death seemed unreal. Yet not even the pleasantness of a morning alone in the countryside could banish the fear of that horror.
It took several minutes before Brin spoke.
“By your own words and by your accent,” he said, “it is plain you come from a faraway land. You know, however, my mother fell to the plague. You know about my ring. You even knew that I plucked coins from the pockets of townspeople. How can all of this be? Will you at least tell me that?”
“Yes,” Rachel said, “This answer is in a letter.”
Brin waited. A butterfly dipped and swooped between them. Rachel finally took her eyes from it and answered his unspoken question.
“It was a letter from your father. It took years to reach us, passed and sold from traveler to traveler.”
“Sold?”
“The bearer of this letter was promised a half year’s wages for safe delivery to our small monastery in Scotland. Whoever first had the letter decided not to risk the danger of passing through many lands but instead sold it for a little gold to another who might take it closer. That person in turn sold it again. And so on. Each time the letter moved closer to our land. Once, though, its owner was killed by road bandits. And the bandit who took the dead man’s possessions could not read and had no idea of the value of the letter. He discarded it. A little boy found it and brought it to his priest, the only man in the village who could read. The priest set it aside and forgot it. Not until the priest died several years later did anyone see it again, finding it among his books. And so the letter’s journey resumed, until finally, many years after your father’s death, his words reach us.”
“And?” Brin said
She didn’t reply immediately.
Brin’s patience could not be stretched further. “Why had he been sent into this land?” he demanded. “What of my mother? How did they meet? How did they fall in love? How did he die? What sent her back to the gypsies without him?”
Although Rachel’s face was distorted with disguise, she smiled sadly. Brin saw nothing but beauty.
“It is a story worthy of any ballad,” Rachel said. “My dream is to find a love like theirs.”
Again she forced Brin to wait. This time, however, he saw that she was collecting her thoughts, and he did not interrupt.
“I, of course, have read the letter,” she said. “Before leaving Scotland, it was my task to set the letter to memory, for it was considered too dangerous to travel with it, and Edwin and I needed to be able to refer to it. Instead of answering your questions, then, with your permission I shall recite as surely as if I am reading from it.”
“Please,” Brin said softly. It would be as if his father were speaking directly to him from beyond the grave.
“This is the letter, then.” Rachel closed her eyes and began to speak.
Father, we have been betrayed. By whom, I cannot say, although as I near death, I wish I had this knowledge to pass on. I only know the betrayer is one of us. Not only has my life been betrayed but the mission as well.
It happened thus. Upon crossing the mountains and reaching the plains of northern Italy, I was sent from our small party of travelers into a small town to seek provisions. Just outside of that town, I was waylaid and taken into the trees near a river. My attackers wore masks. They began to beat me senseless. I pretended early unconciousness, hoping the beating would end. When it did, they began to search me. I heard one of them speak of the precious ring, which I had not taken with me but left behind safely hidden.
As you reach this portion of the letter, the same question will occur to you as it did to me. How is it that thieves could know of the ring? Or that they knew it was my responsibility to safeguard it?
Father, you know better than I do that those who expect us in Rome would never betray the cause or the existence of the ring. Even if one among them were so inclined, none there have knowledge of how we travel, when we are to arrive, or even how we look. It is impossible for them to know we have entered Italy. The source of betrayal, I concluded, could not be one among them, but could only be one of those traveling with us.
Yet even as I concluded this, the knowledge appeared of little use because imminent death was upon me. The thieves bound my arms and legs and tossed me into the river. The current took and battered me. Downstream, around a bend, the river pushed me up against a boulder, and there, for a few moments, I was able to draw air.
I would have died except a woman was washing clothes on the bank. She waded out, and although the rushing water pushed higher than her waist, she persisted. She had a knife, which I found remarkable at the time, but later I discovered she was part of a gypsy camp. With that knife, she cut my bounds and helped me reach shore.
I was too weak and injured to move. This woman hid me and returned at night to tend to my wounds and to feed me. She kept my existence a secret from the other gypsies, for they are united against all outsiders. This continued for one week while the gypsies camped outside of the nearby town.
Her name is Maria. Our love grew. We found a church, and a priest married us before God. In so doing, however, we both became fugitives. I from the betrayer among us. She from her gypsy clan, who were furious that she had joined with an outsider. The stakes were even higher and their fury even greater than I had dreamed, for she had kept hidden from me her position among them. They considered her a princess and were determined to bring her back, determined to kill me.
As fugitives, however, we had a mission. The ring was still hidden among those traveling to Rome. I did not feel safe openly returning to them, for this would give the betrayer knowledge that I was still alive.
It took a month to find them. Then, at night, I went into the camp and took my horse away from them. I had hidden the ring in a hollowed out portion of my saddle. Maria and I fled.
Even with the ring in my possession, I did not consider it safe to proceed to Rome. Although I still did not know who it was, the betrayer would be waiting for me and could easily claim I was the betrayer - for to all appearances, it was I who had disappeared and then returned in the night to steal the ring.
Furthermore, a handful of gypsies were still in relentless pursuit of Maria and me.
We could not rest easy and spent months moving day by day to avoid capture until, without warning, the hand of Black Death struck me. And as I near death, I see no other course except to take the risk of writing this letter and praying it does not fall into the wrong hands.
I doubt I will live to the end of this week. It fills me with great sadness to leave Maria. Our love is a greater joy than I imagined any love could be. The joy and mystery of it surely reflects the love that God our Father has given us all.
Yet I know death is merely a painful heartbeat, taking me into the great light. With this hope through Christ, I know that when Maria leaves this world, I will be there waiting for her.
I face death without fear. Maria will return to the gypsy camp, taking with her this letter, the ring, and our child, which she carries in her womb. We have decided it is there among the gypsies that she will be best able to give birth.
I take satisfaction in knowing the one who betrayed the secret of the ring has no knowledge of Maria in my life. Because of this, it is not possible that anyone knows the location of the ring. It shall remain so until this letter reaches you.
It is Maria’s greatest wish, and mine, that somehow she will find a way to travel to Scotland once the child is born. If the Lord grants us this, Maria will return the ring to you. I know without asking that you will treat her as an equal among the Keepers of the Grail.
Yet I have taken provisions to
ensure this letter will reach you if she cannot. At the seal of this letter, I shall pledge half a year’s wages to the person who brings this letter unopened to you. Know then, if this letter reaches you without Maria, you will find the ring among the gypsies.
Your faithful servant, Christopher.
Angel Blog
I was glad to hear Rachel read the letter too. These events in Brin’s life started to make a lot more sense for me. Of course, I didn’t know what was ahead in Rome or who the betrayer had been or exactly why the ring was so important, but I was hopeful that our Father wanted me to stay with Brin until those questions were resolved.
Yet with all that Brin – and I – had learned from the letter, I also wished Brin would remember the one part of his father’s last written words that showed the ultimate joy provided by a human’s faith in the love of our Father.
Yet I know that death is merely a painful heartbeat, taking me into the great light. With this hope through Christ, I know that when Maria leaves this world, I will be there waiting for her.
Brin’s father knew that the plague would take his life very soon after writing the letter. It was a horrible disease, and, unlike him, many others in his situation had used their last energy to shake their fists in anger at our Father.
At a time when some towns saw half the people taken by Black Death, most believed that an angry God was punishing them for their sins.
Certainly, looking back on the devastation that sent millions upon millions to early deaths, the plague seems senseless at best.
But that’s only if you believe that death is the end and the worst thing that can happen to a human.
As an angel, I implore you to view your existence against eternity. Earthly death simply takes you into another and greater world than you can imagine.
It’s not the first time you’ve faced a change of this magnitude either.
You can’t remember, of course, your time in your mother’s womb, but it was safe and warm. All of your needs were filled. The darkness around you was comforting. Your mother’s movement soothed you, and you spent hours of each day in blissful sleep. When you woke, you would move, pushing your little legs and arms against the constriction that held you, totally unaware that your arms and legs were destined for much grander tasks.
The Angel and the Ring Page 6
