The Wild Baron

by Catherine Coulter

  Theodore Micah laughed. “You did know that I am an actor, did you not? An actor learns many things, my lord. No,” he said quickly, turning to face Phillip, “don’t move or I will cut her throat.” He continued in a meditative voice, “The first woman whose throat I sliced lived in Honfleur. I had taken a packet over to meet a smuggler friend of mine. She listened to a private conversation. I will never forget the gurgling sound she made and all that bright red blood. Heed me, gentlemen, for I am serious here. You may take your damned brother, my lord, but I will have the Grail. It’s there on the floor. The key is right beside it. Now hand it to me.”

  Rohan was breathing hard, nearly beside himself. He should have tied Susannah up and left her with Phillip’s mare in the stable. Damnation! How could he have allowed this to happen twice? He was a damnable protector. He saw no hope for it. “Don’t hurt her.”

  “Then you’d best hurry, my lord. Give me the cask.”

  Rohan didn’t even open the lid, just picked it up and rose slowly.

  “Give it to me and be careful.”

  Susannah gave a small gasp. Rohan and Phillip saw the bright red blood from the nick in her throat.

  Rohan said, “If I give it to you, what will you do?”

  “I must take her with me, but I swear to you that I won’t kill her if you stay back.”

  “You swear?” Phillip said. “You wretched little bastard. How can we believe you? You’re a damned criminal. You’re lower than a bloody slug.”

  “I swear I will not kill her. Give me the cask or you will have a dead wife, my lord.”

  Rohan handed him the cask. It was heavy. How could it be so heavy with just that old beaten-up gold goblet that held more power than any man could imagine?

  “No!” Tibolt shouted. “He can’t have the Grail!”

  It was Tibolt, holding a gun, taking a step toward Theodore Micah. “You can’t have it, you bastard!”

  Suddenly Susannah crumpled to the floor. Micah was so startled that he let her fall. The next instant, Tibolt fired and the bullet ripped through Micah’s throat. There was a hideous gurgling sound, then Theodore Micah whispered, “I was a fool to trust a man of God. Look at you, more the devil you are.” Suddenly, his shirt was wet with blood, and he fell heavily to the floor.

  “Good, the little bastard’s dead. Back into the bedchamber, all of you. I couldn’t kill you before now even though I wanted to. I imagine that any second now we will have company. Get back, damn you!”

  Tibolt shoved his brother back into the room and quickly pulled the bedchamber door closed behind him. He heard a man yelling, then another. A door was yanked open.

  “What’s going on here?”

  Tibolt stuffed the gun in his coat pocket. “I locked the thieves in my bedchamber. They shot my friend here. Quickly, where is a magistrate?”

  “Aye,” a little man with a huge sleeping cap said, his thin legs bare beneath a voluminous white sleeping gown. “I’ll fetch the feller, but chances are, he’s on his butt, his head pickled with the brandy he pours into his mouth, ye ken?”

  “No, no, I’ll fetch him. Just keep those thieves in my bedchamber. Don’t take any chances!”

  In the next moment, Rohan threw open the door. The four men, all in their nightshirts, two of them with caps on their heads, gawked at the man who held a gun and looked more furious than a man just cheated at cards. “Damnation,” Ro-han shouted. “He’s gone! Quickly, we’ve got to get him. He’s got the Grail!”

  A man and a woman came dashing out of the bedchamber after the first man. They paid no attention to the men in their nightshirts. The guests at the inn were left standing over a man obviously very dead, all his blood flowed onto the floor.

  “He’s not got but ten minutes on us,” Phillip shouted, as Rohan tossed Susannah into her saddle.

  “Thank God the stable owner saw he was traveling the road east,” Susannah said, stuffing her skirts around her legs.

  They were off, the bright moonlight illuminating the narrow road in front of them.

  They said nothing, merely pushed and pushed the horses until Rohan pulled his horse to a halt and said, “We must let them rest for a moment. Susannah, are you all right?”

  “Yes, but we must find him. We must get the Grail from him.”

  “What if he’s already drunk from the Grail?” Phillip said. “If he has, then we’re lost. And why wouldn’t he? He could have drunk from it the moment he was out of the inn. He could be waiting just up ahead, waiting to smite us.”

  “No,” Susannah said very quietly. “No, I just realized that he hasn’t yet drunk from the Grail. He can’t, you see.”

  Both men whirled about to face her. “Why the devil not?” Phillip nearly shouted at her.

  “Because,” she said very simply, “he left the holy water. I just remembered seeing the flask on the bed.”

  “She’s right,” Rohan said. “My God, she’s right. And that means that he’s got to find holy water before he can drink from the goblet.”

  “And that means a church,” Phillip said. “There was a church in Dunkeld. Why didn’t he simply get some holy water there?”

  “Because he knew we’d be right behind him,” Rohan said. “He didn’t want to take the chance. Let me think. All right, we’re nearly to the coast. Just up ahead is the small town of Monfieth. He’ll think it’s safe for him to stop there and steal some holy water.”

  “We haven’t much time,” Susannah said, kicking her mare in the sides. “Hurry! We can’t let him drink from the Grail.”

  There wasn’t a church within Monfieth. There was an ancient abbey just away from the town lying on the cliffs overlooking Buddon Ness. The sky was lighting, the moon faded away now. It was nearing dawn.

  As they came around the bend of the narrow, rutted road, the air was strong with the smell of water. Then suddenly they saw the old abbey, standing tall, most of it in ruins atop a small promontory, backing to the very edge of the cliffs. They saw Tibolt’s horse, its reins loose, feeding from the brothers’ garden.

  There were no lights in any of the abbey windows.

  Then, Susannah saw Tibolt, carrying the cask under one arm and a beaker filled with water in the other hand. He was racing toward the ruins that held the highest ground. He turned then and saw them.

  They heard him laugh. “Come,” he shouted to them. “Come!”

  Their horses joined Tibolt’s in the brothers’ garden. Rohan and Phillip pulled out their guns as they ran after him.

  He was standing atop a fallen beam. They watched him pour the holy water into the goblet.

  “No!” Susannah shouted. “No!”

  Tibolt raised the filled goblet, laughed in triumph, and drank it down.

  34

  THEY SLOWLY WALKED TOWARD HIM, KNOWING THERE was no hope now. He’d won. The world had lost.

  “Oh, God,” Phillip said, staring at Tibolt, who was standing tall and silent, waiting, just as they were waiting. “What will he do?”

  Then suddenly Tibolt began to tremble. He quickly set the Grail on the stone. He was shaking so hard that the glass beaker fell to the rock-strewn ground. He cried out, clutching his chest, then slammed his palms against his ears. Susannah took a quick step toward him, but Rohan grabbed her arm, pulling her back. “No,” he said. “Don’t move. Oh, God, what has he done? What is happening?”

  Tibolt raised his trembling arms wide, staring up into the sky. “God, I have drunk from the holy chalice. Grant me power. Grant me immortality.”

  He stopped trembling suddenly. Now he shuddered, his body heaved. He seemed to draw in on himself. He yelled into the silent heavens, “Grant me my rightful power!”

  They moved closer, slowly, very slowly, not taking their eyes off Tibolt.

  The horizon was a vivid pink with slashes of blue and gray in the sky above. The sun was just beginning to rise behind him, beams of light coming through the ancient ruins of the abbey.

  Suddenly he became utterly still, as if h
e were a stone, as if he were frozen in place. Slowly, slowly, he began to change. He began to shudder again until his whole body was dancing with the power of the convulsions.

  Then Tibolt was no more. Shadows and light played over him, seeming to erase him. It was as if a giant hand were molding him, then remolding, pressing here, pushing out there. He was changing.

  Suddenly they were staring at Susannah. Tibolt had turned into Susannah. It made no sense. It was terrifying. “No,” Rohan whispered at the ghastly image of his wife, weaving back and forth on the beam in front of them. “No.”

  The false Susannah said from where she stood on that rock, “Now I know how you got out of the catacombs. All that power you had with just a few drops of holy water from the Grail. Now I see it clearly.”

  The false Susannah suddenly began to choke, her hands clutched at her throat, but she began to change again, now slowly becoming a very old man dressed in one-hundred-year-old garb. His voice sounded as ancient as the rock upon which he stood. “I must give the Holy Grail over to you. Guard it well, bishop. Guard it well. Tell no one what it really is. Call it the Devil’s Vessel. Tell everyone that whoever drinks holy water from it will die a horrible death.”

  “The old Knight Templar,” Phillip whispered between frozen lips.

  Then the old knight was gone and in his place was a vigorous man in his prime, dressed oddly, and there was a crown on his head. His head was thrown back, his voice rang out proudly. “Aye, I accept the Grail. I will guard it with my life. I will take it home to Scotland. No one will ever find it there.”

  “Macbeth,” Susannah whispered. “It is surely Macbeth accepting the Grail from Pope Leo IX.”

  “He is becoming everyone who touched the Grail,” Ro-han said, not wanting to believe it, but even as he stared at the ancient king of Scotland, he was changing, changing yet again. He was an old man now, dressed like figures in a drawing Rohan had seen of the ancient disciples. He was garbed all in white. Sandals were on his feet. He wore a long beard.

  “Who is he?” Susannah whispered.

  “I don’t know. Perhaps someone close to Jesus after the Last Supper?”

  “I am Joseph of Arimathea,” the man screamed at them, his voice thin from age. “Jesus gave me the holy vessel after he’d drunk from it. He told me to collect his blood and pour it into the vessel. I buried him and I took the vessel.”

  Then Joseph of Arimathea was no more. Flashes of other men, all biblical in their dress, passed in front of them, the vision quickly moving from one to another.

  There were twelve of them.

  Finally, there was utter stillness. Tibolt had no human form now. All features that had made him human were gone from his face, smoothed out as if he were now stone. His arms and legs froze against him, losing definition. He had the look of a pillar, frozen, lifeless. Then in the next instant, the pillar simply disappeared. There was nothing.

  The Holy Grail still sat atop the rock. Suddenly, from behind it slithered a serpent, green and scaled, its head huge, its mouth open, hissing toward them. It slowly began to wind itself about the Grail, its thick body overlapping on itself as it circled once, then again and again. Finally its huge head was resting on top of the cup. The mouth opened. What came out was Tibolt’s voice.

  “It spared you. I know now why it spared you. I know all now, but it makes no difference, for I am no more.”

  The sky, which had just an instant before been glistening in the dawn sun, blackened. Thunder boomed. Lightning split the darkness, great streaks of it that sent the lake below foaming. Suddenly a crater of light appeared over the serpent—wide, fathomless. Then there was blackness again, as if it were midnight.

  They could see nothing.

  Susannah turned her face against Rohan’s chest. She felt the stiffness of him, the shock of what they had seen. There came a soft rumbling noise. The rumbling continued until the rocks began to shake. One ancient arch crumbled and fell over the cliff into the lake below. The massive rock upon which Tibolt had stood, upon which the hideous serpent had wound its body around the Holy Grail, was empty.

  There was no serpent, no Holy Grail.

  They jumped when the rock stood upright. The white became brighter, blinding them, then it seemed to spread, opening itself.

  The rock disappeared into the blinding white.

  The rumbling stopped abruptly.

  There was nothing.

  The sun appeared, the day continued its dawning. A sparrow sounded in the silence.

  They walked as one to where the rock had stood. It looked as if nothing had happened here for more than a hundred years. Even the reliquary was gone.

  Susannah cocked her head to one side and pointed. She leaned down and picked something up. She turned wordlessly to Rohan and held out her hand. In the center of her palm lay the tiny golden key.

  “The key to the reliquary. It was left for us.”

  “No, Susannah, the key was left for you,” Rohan said.

  Phillip stared at that key, then at where the rock had stood. The broken glass beaker lay in shards on the ground.

  Susannah was looking off into the distance, through the abbey ruins, over the water. She swallowed, clutching the golden key in her hand. “The Holy Grail had known only good until Tibolt took it.”

  “All the forms Tibolt took,” Rohan said slowly, “they were the people who had held the Grail, who had held the Grail or drunk from it. The reason you weren’t harmed, Susannah, is because you are good. And that is what Tibolt saw so clearly at the end.”

  Phillip shook himself. “I want to leave this place. There’s nothing more for us here.”

  “You’re right,” Susannah said. “Both the good and the evil are gone.”

  “That’s not quite true,” Rohan said, pulling his wife against him. “The three of us are here. We survived.”

  He closed his hands over hers. He thought he felt the warmth of the tiny golden key she still clutched in her palm.

  He knew in the deepest part of him that they would never speak of this again. He also knew that the tiny golden key would bind the three of them together for the rest of their lives.

  “Let me deal with my little angel here first,” Susannah said, lifting a squealing Marianne into her arms. As for Marianne, after spending no more than fifteen minutes with her mother’s undivided attention, being rocked and praised and told an exciting story of nothing that actually happened, Marianne was ready to be set down and see to Rohan.

  Rohan bounced her on his knee until she tired and leaned back against his chest, still certain that she had his full attention. Her fingers were in her mouth.

  Toby said, “I have tried to train her not to put her fingers in her mouth, Susannah. But whenever I pull them out, she howls, and I finally gave up. Charlotte said her ears couldn’t take the punishment. I’ll try again, Susannah, but we have to be alone. She doesn’t howl when we’re alone, isn’t that odd?”

  “Not at all,” Susannah said. “Why would she howl if she didn’t have an audience?”

  “Ro-han!”

  “Yes, my perfect little princess?”

  “Lunnon. I want to go to Lunnon.”

  “We will,” Rohan said slowly. “We will go there very soon now.”

  “I don’t suppose that fine tale you just spun for your daughter has any resemblance to the truth,” Charlotte said.

  “No, Mother,” Rohan said. “Actually, I am sorry, but Tibolt is dead. It was an accident. He tried to save me, but fell over a cliff himself. There was no treasure. It was all a legend, a myth, if you will. There was nothing, just betrayal. But never forget, Mother, that Tibolt died as he lived. I would that you and Toby not speak of it more.”

  Susannah merely nodded.

  “I don’t like this,” Charlotte said, then broke off when they saw that neither her dear son nor her daughter-in-law was going to say another word. Tears welled up, but she managed, for the moment at least, to sniff them back. She knew there was more, but the res
ult was Tibolt’s death. He’d died trying to save his brother. As Rohan had said, Tibolt had died as he had lived. She swallowed again and said, “I am relieved that Tibolt didn’t turn out to be like George. That would have broken my heart, I think.”

  A month later, Lord and Lady Mountvale left for London, taking their daughter with them. It had taken nearly that long for Marianne to learn to call Rohan Papa.

  Colonel Nemesis Jones proposed to Charlotte on a bright, warm day that even held a rainbow after a light rain shower. All thought she would accept him, but she didn’t. She left for Venice instead, taking Augustus, the Welsh footman, with her, to act as her bodyguard, among other things.

  Mountvale Townhouse in London had been stunned to hear of the baron’s nearly five-year-old marriage, even more stunned to learn of his little daughter.

  But that response was nothing to the reaction of Society. There had been endless foment, endless speculation, endless dire predictions on what would come of this obviously doomed marriage, made when the baron was naught but a wild young man. Well, truth be told, he was still a wild young man, but now he was more a discreet wild young man. Wasn’t he? Then—five years before—he’d just been wild, headstrong and impulsive.

  However, Lady Sally Jersey, an unchallenged leader of Society, just chanced to speculate that perhaps the baron was done sowing his wild oats. Perhaps that was why he had brought his wife and little daughter out of exile. He was a reformed philanderer.

  No one agreed with that—there was no joy in it, no promise of wickedness. No one, however, disagreed with that assessment either—at least not to Lady Sally Jersey’s face. No one had the nerve.

  All waited avidly to see the new baroness. All waited to see how long it would be before the baron would tuck his wife away again and resume his dissipations. Surely all his mistresses—numbered in the legions—were pining for him.

  Pulver, the baron’s gaunt-faced secretary, said to his friend David Plummy, “They’ve been here for four days now. I don’t understand any of it. The baron hasn’t left the house at all in the evenings unless it is to accompany his wife somewhere. He’s given no hint when he plans to resume his former life. When we were at Mountvale House, he was a model of husbandly rectitude. It depressed my spirits.”