The Red Cross of Gold I:. The Knight of Death

by Brendan Carroll

  “You stand accused of idolatry, witchcraft, heresy, blasphemy and sodomy.” She played the part of the Inquisitor, naming the horrendous crimes of which the Templars had been accused during the Dark Ages. Her tone clearly betrayed her growing aggravation with him. He frowned in confusion as the scene in his mind apparently shifted again.

  “Your Brother Mark Andrew is accused of rape and murder,” she said. This was more fascinating than useful. Maxie cleared his throat again loudly.

  “He is sick. He is not himself. There was blood. She had the dagger.” Dambretti lowered his eyes and looked at the floor frowning. “It is not for me to say. It is the Hand of God. One misplaced word and the world will no longer no me.”

  “And what of you? Will you divulge your secrets to save your Brother Ramsay? Tell me your secrets, my son. The confessional is sacred. The priest cannot tell what is said here.”

  He turned his head to the right as if listening to someone she could not see. “Shrive me, Brother, for I am innocent and I would go to my death free of sin,” he spoke to his unseen companion. “I have dedicated my life to the Service of the Temple and now, if I must, I will sacrifice my life to preserve the sanctity of the Order. My Brother will kill me, if I betray him. Give me my sword, Master, and I will cast myself upon it, but do not ask me to betray my Brothers. That I cannot do.”

  Valentino was getting nowhere. Just when she thought she was making some headway, he would unexpectedly go off on a tangent as if he, or someone else, were controlling the session. Now she had brought him to the brink of suicide. It was obvious that her dream therapy would not work on him any more than it had worked on Ramsay though this session was much more interesting. She would have given anything to get into his mind and see what was there. What was so important that he would give his life before revealing it to her even under hypnosis? He was willing to talk, but his thoughts were disjointed, it would have taken weeks of therapy to sort it all. She didn’t have weeks to spend with him. The few hours had been enough to tell her that she could not afford to be around him at all, if she were to retain her detached objectivity.

  “Go in peace, my son,” she said disgustedly and placed one hand on his dark hair. He crumpled to the floor, sound asleep. “Damn it all, Maxie. Well, at least d’Brouchart is here. We will see how much these Knights are worth to him. Leave him here for a while. Maybe you can do better with him. He really pisses me off.”

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  How Mark Andrew could manage to hang onto the prancing stallion for the slow, hard trip back was beyond her comprehension, but the longer they rode, the better he got. The big horse refused to behave as she pulled him along by the reins. She walked the bay as slowly as possible, but the black horse swerved back and forth behind her in a zigzag pattern, obviously wanting to take the lead. It seemed the horse was much like its owner, Cecile Valentino, self-centered and unsympathetic to the troubles of its rider. It wanted only to get back to the stables for a rub down and a bag of oats. Halfway back, Mark Andrew took over the reins and their progress improved. By the time the two riders got back to the house, the sun was slipping down the western sky.

  They rode into the stable where she dismounted quickly and pushed her bay into her stall. The stallion pranced about nervously; his rider was unable to dismount without her help. Merry pulled on Mark and he half fell from the saddle, but it was not nearly as bad as the first time she had tried to help him down. He caught himself on her shoulders and then stumbled away from her. He grabbed one of the support beams and purposefully stretched himself up. She was amazed when he actually did two chin ups before dropping to the hay strewn floor in agony. He did not scream, but his faced belied his condition as he pulled himself up again and stood leaning on his knees, gasping for breath and clutching the sword’s hilt in a death grip. His eyes rolled back in his head and she thought he would faint before she could catch him, but he held out one hand, stopping her. He focused on her face and nodded.

  “It’ll be all right,” he said.

  “You won’t be going anywhere tonight,” she objected and shook her head.

  “Just get my car,” he whispered and managed to straighten up again. The pain was now a throbbing burn, front and back. Nothing like it had been before, but he still felt weak and was afraid to take a deep breath. His breathing was limited to shallow, open-mouthed gasps. Incredibly enough, he was hungry, but not terribly so. What he needed was rest and water.

  “Let me take you inside first,” she insisted. “You can rest before we go. I am not going to allow Valentino to go on with this stupid plan. She’s already caused too much trouble. I’ll call the police, if need be. I know how to handle her when I have to. And the first thing I’m going to do is fire Maxie. I pay his salary, you know. I can fire him. And,” she lowered her voice to a whisper. “I have a pistol in my room.”

  “I thought she was in charge here,” he told her. He could not trust her words, but he was in no shape to run around hot wiring cars or fighting off the Knight of the Sword, who was still lurking around somewhere. “You could drive,” he suggested hopefully. “I’ll let you drive me. How about that?”

  “I could, but I need to change clothes and so do you. We’re covered with blood. We’d attract too much attention wherever we went,” Merry said and took his arm. “Come on now. Don’t worry. I’ll take care of everything. She owes me a few favors.”

  Mark shook his head. He had worked so hard to get away and now he was back where he had started. But he couldn’t stay in the stable. The horse that Beaujold had been riding was still missing and that meant that Beaujold might be out there on it somewhere. Even his fingers betrayed him as the golden sword slipped from his grasp into the straw on the floor. She picked up his sword awkwardly and then wrapped her arm around his waist. They limped slowly across the yard to the side door. No one was in sight as they entered the back service door.

  If they ran into Maxie, he would just have to kill him.

  It seemed the house was deserted, but she knew that should not be the case. The cook was in the kitchen busily dictating a grocery list to one of the maids as if all was well. She was almost as exhausted as Mark and she desperately needed a bath. She had blood all over her from his clothes and the bareback ride had left her feeling numb. They made their way slowly up the stairs and then across the balcony to her bedroom. She locked the door securely after depositing him on her bed and then went to draw a bath. She wanted to check his wounds to see if they were as bad as she expected. He made no protest when she took off his shirt. Partially dried blood, sticky and dark covered his stomach and his back from just below his ribs downwards to where it disappeared into the horribly stained slacks. She found a ghastly wound, still very red and about three inches long on his stomach just below his ribcage and a matching laceration, somewhat smaller was on his back. Clean through! But the cuts were no longer open. They were already healing without the benefit of stitches or bandages. Flakes of blood, sand and debris showered the carpet as she helped him undress.

  “I’m sorry, Merry,” he told her as she pulled off his socks. Even his feet were covered with blood. “I needed some time. Three days. Just three days.”

  Merry didn’t answer him. They didn’t have three days. She helped him into the tub, brought the sword as he requested and then left him to take care of his own business. She had nothing to give him that he could wear. Glancing back once to see that he was sitting up and able to continue the bath on his own, she left him to check on the rest of the household.

  They needed food, water and clothes and she was lost. She felt like a stranger in her own house. Secondarily, they needed to know the whereabouts of their enemies. Maxie, Valentino, the other Knights of the Order. If the blond Knight showed up again and found Ramsay in such a sorry state, he would not stand a chance. Clothes first and then she would go down to the kitchen for food and water. She would simply inquire of the cook and the maid as to Valentino’s location. She needed to warn her be
fore it was too late… if it wasn’t already too late… of the other Knight. The one she had not captured.

  When she stepped out into the hallway, dressed in a fluffy bathrobe, the house was eerily quiet.

  From the top of the stairs, she could hear faint voices from somewhere downstairs. A man and a woman. Most likely Valentino and Maxie in the library. Good. It wouldn’t do to leave Mark for long. He would need help putting on clean clothes. When she reached his room on the third floor, she found the door locked. She tapped hesitantly on the door and waited several seconds before knocking again. When she heard nothing from inside, she went to the table at the end of the hall and fished the key out of a vase. Inside the room, she locked the door again, just in case, and got down on her knees looking for his bags under the bed. She grabbed hold of the nearest one and pulled the heavy case from under the bed. When she hefted the bag onto the bed and looked up, she almost screamed at the sight of the quizzical face of the curly haired Schroeder impersonator smiling at her from the other side of the bed. His chin was propped on his hands and he looked as if they played peek-a-boo every day.

  She caught her breath and fell sitting on the floor. The key slipped from her hand and bounced across the carpet under the bed as the blood drained from her face. Ironically, she had locked herself in the room with this unknown threat.

  When she clawed her way back up on her knees, he held a hammer in one hand. It was the same hammer the maid had brought them when they had come to install the Oriental rug. He’d found it lying on the floor under the bed where he had left it, thinking that Mark might need it. Little did he know then that he would be trapped here himself. He slapped the head of the hammer against the palm of his hand and looked at her in amusement. She made a mad dash for the key, but he was faster and they met, face to face under the bed. His hand closed over hers and the key cut into her flesh. He turned her hand over forcefully and she tried to scream, but he stopped her scream with a kiss. This unexpected action completely shut her down for several seconds. Long enough for him to replace his lips with his hand and to pull her kicking and thrashing from under the bed.

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  Mark washed the blood from him as best he could and wrinkled his nose at the rose colored water in the big tub. The hot water felt like a dream, but the red tinged swirls feet reminded him of the recurring nightmare about the dead Knight and the Saracen woman. He closed his eyes and forced the vision from his mind. He looked down at the new red wound on his stomach that was very near the older scar he had worn since the crusades. It would be gone in a day or so, but it was still very tender. He had a few visible bruises here and there and his head hurt where he had struck the boulder when Beaujold knocked from the stallion, probably a fracture there. When he was satisfied that he was fairly clean, he pulled the plug and got out of the tub, wondering where the Pixie had gone and why she had not come back. It seemed she had been gone overly long already.

  He checked the door and then combed back his hair with his fingers.

  "Dammit!" he cursed when his fingers got stuck in his hair.

  Something hard was tangled in his hair and would not come out. He was too tired and his fingers too clumsy to get it out. He wrapped one of her fluffy towels around his waist and sat in the chair in front of her dressing table, staring at his own reflection while he waited for her, drumming his fingers on the smooth glass. He would not move again. It was too painful.

  After a few moments, he got up and checked the door again. Still unlocked; no one in the hall. He sat on the bed and pulled the comforter around his shoulders. He would wait for her here. The minutes ticked by and he began to shiver and shake again; his eyelids drooped. The soft down comforter was too tempting to resist. He dropped the towel on the floor and stretched out between the silken sheets, pulling the comforter over him. He would wait for her here. He hoped she would find something clean for him to wear and that she would not be gone much longer.

  His body was once more trying to shut down for healing purposes. It was becoming an annoying habit, finding himself without his clothes in the wrong place at the wrong time. His sword lay on top of the comforter, winking at him in the reflected light from the slowly turning ceiling fan above the bed. He drew it under the cover, laying it by his side, parallel to his body. It was not the first time he had slept with his sword. The feel of its cold presence was comforting and familiar. As he lay on his back staring up at the canopy, he had the strange notion that he should be holding the sword more closely. He turned on his side and pulled the hilt close to his chest, bringing one leg up slightly and hooking his left foot behind his right knee. That was better. He could watch the door from this position. The blade was razor sharp, but was just as comforting as the Pixie might have been. Perhaps more so. It did not take long for sleep to overcome him and he drifted away into peaceful, dreamless oblivion. He would wait for her… here.

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  When Thomas Beaujold burst into the room at Miss Penelope Martin’s Bed and Breakfast, he was astounded to see Sir William Montague lying on one of the beds, staring up at the ceiling. The Englishman turned over slowly and propped his head in his hand.

  “Brother Thomas,” he said in a pleasantly sarcastic voice. “My Brother, it is such a nice surprise to see you again. We thought perhaps you were one of the prisoners.”

  Beaujold’s mind recovered slightly from the shock of seeing the Knight of the Holy City, only to be swept away in terror at the sound of the Grand Master’s voice to his left.

  “Where are your Brothers?” d’Brouchart asked him bluntly.

  The accusatory tone in the man’s voice was unmistakable. The Grand Master’s presence spoke for itself, telling him that he was in serious trouble and that the Master already knew of his blunders. The Knight of the Sword turned slowly and then went to kneel before the Grand Master. He lifted d’Brouchart’s hand from the arm of the rocker, and kissed the ring on the man’s left hand before looking up. The rage he felt and his need for haste ebbed away, like the tidal surge after a storm. He lowered his head and began to cry uncontrollably. Something he had not done in almost sixty years.

  D’Brouchart stood up slowly and then caught the smaller man by both arms. He pulled him to his feet and kissed him lightly on the lips in the Templar fashion then released him.

  “Now tell me what has happened, Sir.” The Grand Master looked into his tear-filled eyes. To see this one cry was almost beyond endurance. His news must be grave indeed. "And I shall see no more tears!"

  Two hours later found the three men speeding down the highway toward Cecile Valentino’s mansion in the shallow valley west of town. They passed the drive to her house and proceeded down the blacktop for several kilometers before turning the Range Rover across the open terrain between the highway and the dry wash running west from Valentino’s property. Beaujold was behind the steering wheel and d’Brouchart sat stone-faced in the passenger seat.

  Montague sat in the back seat with one arm propped on the wooden chest in the seat next to him, wondering what they would find when they arrived at their destination in this Godforsaken wasteland. His anger at what Beaujold had told them was fading, but it left his face burning like the aftermath of severe sunburn. The red-orange sun was sinking rapidly over the horizon, and several times they were forced to brake for the coyotes and jackrabbits that darted across in front of the vehicle. Large gray deer simply stood in their path, mesmerized by the lights of the Rover as it bounced over the rocky terrain. Montague shuddered, thinking about his Brother lying in the desert all day under the heat of the sun and now the damned coyotes added to his terrible visions. The sheer number of creatures they flushed from the underbrush was staggering. God knew what else might be out there looking for a meal. How could Beaujold have left Ramsay in such a terrible position? And how could the Grand Master have made them wait so long before going out to look for him?

  Beaujold had paced the room, wearing out the carpet in hi
s anxiety, alternating between bouts of mumbling to himself and fitful prayers. Perhaps d’Brouchart was trying to teach the man a lesson, but at Ramsay’s expense? It was heartless and cruel. The Grand Master must have been angrier with the Knight of Death than his unreadable countenance betrayed. To Montague's eyes, Edgard did not give a whit about Ramsay’s plight, but Montague held his tongue, unable to think of anything to say that would describe the way he felt at that moment. And nothing he could say would have helped. He wished desperately that he was back home in his London cottage, having a sherry before bed.

  The Grand Master’s face had remained unchanged as Beaujold had unfolded the tale of the mission’s misfortunes and misadventures. It was inconceivable that one woman had been able to capture four of five Templars sent against her. And a fairly well-trained apprentice in the mix. Inconceivable!

  William glanced at the wooden chest on the seat next to him and shuddered again, dreading what he would be expected to do, if they found what they were looking for. This sort of thing was not in his job description. That the Knight of Death should be in need of his own services was something Sir Montague had never considered. He hoped against hope that the Grand Master would not expect him to take on the Mysteries of the Final Rites from the Chevalier du Morte for long. If worse came to worse, he would ask to transfer the mysteries to someone else after a reasonable time. He was an accountant, not an assassin, but, by God, he would do it gladly before allowing Beaujold to take on the duties of the Chevalier du Morte. He would be damned if he would stand for it!

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  Mark opened his eyes as someone sat on the bed next to him. The room was dark, but not totally so. The indirect lighting from the track lights over the Pixie’s marble tub spilled across the floor, illuminating the room in soft, lavender hues. Lavender. Purple. Lavender. There was someone… ‘Did you miss me?’ a ghostly voice echoed through his mind and was gone. His mind awoke more slowly than his eyes and he wondered where he was. His grip on the sword tightened automatically as he looked up into the dark eyes of Cecile Valentino.