Gene of Isis

by Traci Harding

  I didn’t hear the knock on the door, but as Susan entered, I whirled to a stop.

  ‘Feeling better?’ she queried in a playful fashion.

  ‘Yes!’ I gasped as I felt Albray abruptly withdraw from my frame. I was left tottering on my own, flushed and exalted.

  ‘Constable Fletcher is here to see you,’ she said.

  ‘Who?’ It took me a moment to snap out of my delirium, and I placed the mirror aside. ‘I’ll be right down.’

  The poor constable was not a happy man as he informed me that, ‘It has been deduced, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Lord Hereford died of apoplexy.’ His expression and tone were not so resolute as his words. ‘I’m very sorry, Miss Granville.’

  ‘No more questions then,’ I said, obviously not surprised.

  ‘No more questions,’ he reluctantly confirmed, and was accompanied out by the steward.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Ashlee.’ Susan held my hand, as she could see I was fit to cry. ‘Won’t you come to the ball with us this evening—’

  I held a finger to her lips. ‘I know you only wish to take my mind off my worries, but that is where my mind needs to be right now. I’ll be fine at home alone,’ I assured her. Actually, ‘home alone’ sounded extremely nice indeed.

  I had dinner in my room, as I planned to begin reading the work of Douglas and Clarissa Hamilton. I was not a paragraph into the text when I felt someone leaning over my shoulder. I was startled to find Albray. ‘I thought you’d gone?’

  You didn’t dismiss me, he explained.

  I could feel myself blushing as I recalled being controlled by him. ‘You are an excellent swordsman,’ I commended, wishing I could control the heat rising through my cheeks.

  And that was just a hand mirror, he jested. Wait until you see what we can do with a real sword.

  Actually, I swear I detected a little awkwardness in his behaviour. I couldn’t see it, but I sensed an attraction. ‘Would you like me to dismiss you?’

  Albray shrugged. It is a long time since I’ve been in a woman’s bedchamber. He sat down in the other chair by my reading table, with a large grin on his face. Perhaps you wish to dismiss me?

  He knew I didn’t want to dismiss him. ‘I have more questions for you.’

  Ahhh…I thought so. He tried not to show disappointment that I was not going to flirt with him. I’d only just discovered the art of flirting and I had to admit I did find it fun. Still, I was not in the mood for play at present.

  ‘What did you mean when you said I was one of the fey?’

  Albray laughed. I was wondering how much longer it would be before you asked. It has to do with your bloodline—

  ‘An ancient bloodline of kings?’ I recalled the information I’d obtained from Mr Devere.

  He nodded.

  ‘And Mr Devere is also of this bloodline?’ I posed.

  So you’ve been told…I know only as much as you do on that count.

  When there came a knock at my door, I rolled my eyes with frustration. Could I not get a moment to pursue my own interests? ‘Yes?’

  Nanny entered. ‘Mr Devere is downstairs and hoped it would not be too inconvenient to speak with you.’

  ‘Who ever calls at this hour?’ I thought it terribly rude and inconsiderate. ‘No, Nanny, not today.’

  She hesitated to comply with my wishes, which Nanny rarely did. ‘I believe his tidings are most earnest, Mistress. Won’t you spare a few minutes—’

  ‘Oh, very well,’ I snapped, annoyed. Every ally I had wanted me to reconcile with Mr Devere; at least if I did, I might find a minute’s peace!

  Shall I come? Albray offered, a smile of mischief on his face.

  ‘Dismissed, dismissed, dismissed!’

  Aw, he whined sweetly as he vanished.

  ‘Mr Devere, you asked to see me?’ I entered the downstairs drawing room, where a fire burned brightly to welcome the family upon their return home. The servants were all in their quarters and the large room was dimly lit and silent.

  The gentleman assessed me for a few moments. ‘I was very sorry to hear about Lord Hereford. I wanted to be sure that all fares well with you.’

  I nodded and forced a smile. ‘The authorities are saying that I caused him to have a stroke.’ I looked Mr Devere in the eye to capture his reaction.

  ‘I feel sure that you could do nothing but good for any man’s heart.’ He kept the conversation light but not disrespectful.

  ‘Really?’ I noted he was flirting with me already. ‘Have you not met my father?’

  He smiled, conceding that I had not done Lord Granville’s heart much good lately. ‘I met with him today as a matter of fact.’

  My good humour departed rapidly. ‘May I ask why?’

  ‘To inquire if he still planned to disinherit you.’

  I immediately suspected that Mr Devere’s motivation was to ensure that if he proposed, I still came with a title and estates.

  Mr Devere read my train of thought from my expression. ‘I didn’t want you being left destitute by this sad turn of events,’ he argued.

  ‘Why should that be a concern of yours?’ I protested his interference in my private life.

  ‘Because, if you will not consider me as a husband, you might at least come to consider me as a friend,’ he replied forthrightly.

  ‘You would be content just to be my friend?’ I didn’t think so. No title would come from just a friendship.

  ‘No,’ he said frankly, ‘but I shall thankfully accept any role in your life where you will actually acknowledge my existence.’ He almost flinched as he awaited a scathing response.

  I could have lashed out and pretended to find insult in his straightforward manner, but the truth was I appreciated his forthrightness. ‘I know I have been very unfair on you, Mr Devere, but ever since my coming out, all I have heard from everyone around me is “marry Mr Devere”! I am sure that I could walk out on the street and ask any passer-by, who should I marry? And they would answer—’

  ‘Mr Devere,’ he concluded with a smile, completely in sympathy with my reasoning. ‘It couldn’t perhaps mean that it is the right thing to do?’

  ‘How could it be?’ I retorted, ‘when you are everything in a husband that would cause me bother.’

  ‘Really?’ He chuckled, as if he couldn’t imagine what was so unacceptable about him. ‘Do tell.’

  ‘Well, to begin with you are a social creature, and I long for a reclusive life of study. You are a gentleman with a lust to be a lord, which will tie you to England, and I have a lust for travel. And finally…you are altogether far too handsome. I would be forever fending off mistresses.’

  Mr Devere smiled broadly, acknowledging that I thought him handsome. Now I was flirting with him—how did that happen?

  ‘How is this plan then? We marry, spend our honeymoon with my brother and sister, and your brother and sister, at the Devere chateau in Northern France. Then we could leave them and use my yearly inheritance to do some extensive travel. We could return to England whenever your father eventually dies and leaves us your estate, at which time we could deal with the lordship situation.’

  I was dazed, and I couldn’t work out if he was serious or not. I’d never bothered finding out what his intentions were. ‘That is a really good plan,’ I credited, to see what he’d say.

  ‘You would find those terms acceptable?’ Now he was trying to clarify if we were still jesting.

  ‘Would you find those terms acceptable, Mr Devere?’ I threw the ball back in his court.

  ‘I cannot possibly imagine a more agreeable arrangement,’ he assured me, never fearful to expose his true feelings, and I knew they were his true feelings as his light-body was very lovely to behold and free from blemish. ‘You see, Miss Granville, although I do not have Lord Hereford’s experience with travel, I am very eager to experience travel for myself.’

  The stunned smirk on my face must have said it all. ‘I feel it is too much to be widowed and then engaged again in the same
day.’ I explained my reluctance to admit that what he proposed was a dream come true. ‘May I have a little time to digest this conversation?’

  ‘Of course.’ He seemed satisfied and yet reluctant to leave. ‘And tomorrow when you see me, will you be distant once more?’

  I had barely noticed that all through our dialogue we had been inching closer to one another—now we were very close indeed. The firelight ignited the look of longing on his face as it neared my own.

  Our lips met only briefly but my senses were still racing for hours after the event.

  I lay in bed that night with myriad conflicting emotions all fighting for precedence and after being tossed from excitement to grief, to guilt, to pain and back to that kiss, I was so exhausted that I slept.

  ‘Wake up, Ashlee…is it true?’ I didn’t have to open my eyes to know it was Susan, and she was really excited about something.

  I didn’t want to wake. I was in a warm place with Mr Devere, and I was coming to his rescue. I was wearing men’s clothes and wielding a sword. I had defeated his captors and he was just about to kiss me in appreciation for saving his life.

  ‘Ashlee!’ The way Susan was shaking me took me back to our childhood. ‘Wake up!’

  ‘I’m being kissed, go away,’ I mumbled, as Susan was well used to my elaborate dreams.

  ‘And by whom are you being kissed?’ she asked.

  My eyes burst open and I sat bolt upright with a gasp.

  ‘So it is true,’ she deduced from the look on my face, and she seemed frightfully pleased about it.

  ‘How fickle does that make me?’ I grabbed my head, as it struggled to catch up with the way my world had spun around completely in one day. ‘How do you know about it?’ I was suddenly horrified that Mr Devere might have let a rumour slip.

  ‘He hasn’t told anyone anything,’ Susan reassured me. ‘It’s just that when he returned to the ball last night he appeared to be quite a different man than he has been these last few weeks.’

  I smiled. ‘Different, how?’

  ‘He seemed like a man in love, and not a lover scorned.’ Susan giggled as she observed my broad smile. ‘Come to mention it, so do you.’

  I shied from the comment and climbed out of bed. ‘This is all a bit sudden.’

  ‘Well, the wedding is only weeks away, and it would be just as easy to have a triple as a double ceremony.’ Susan was excited although she was trying very hard to repress it and not pressure me. ‘Oh, do come with us to France, Ashlee…we could have such fun and adventures. It would be just like one of your stories!’

  ‘Yes, it would.’ I smiled at the comparison. ‘But…’

  Was it because I had heard it stated that I was destined to marry Mr Devere that I was fighting the event so hard, or was it because I knew this would be a lifetime commitment and no short-term affair?

  ‘So much has happened. I need time to catch my breath,’ I replied sensibly. ‘I should like to see my first intended buried before I think about taking another.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Susan could not share my grief. She was having the time of her life and was finding it difficult to relate to my feelings. ‘I just want everyone to be as happy as I am which is not really fair of me in your case.’

  ‘I am happier than I was yesterday.’ I returned to the bed and took hold of her hands. I had no desire to bring her down from heaven. ‘I’ll tell you a little secret about Mr Devere, which you must swear upon my honour you will not divulge.’

  Her blue eyes grew wide and she nodded in encouragement. ‘I swear.’ She squeezed my hands tighter.

  ‘He kissed me.’

  ‘No!’ She placed both hands to her mouth to smother her shock and delight.

  ‘Just a little one.’ I held my thumb and first finger almost together. ‘It was ever so innocently delivered, and quite brilliant really.’

  Susan had given up on covering her shock. ‘I haven’t even been kissed yet, except on the cheek in public, and that doesn’t really constitute a kiss. Where did it happen? In the lower drawing room? Yes, it was a very cosy arrangement when we arrived home. Did you find it so?’

  I nodded and dwelt on the moment fondly. ‘He wants to take me travelling.’

  ‘I know.’

  Susan’s reply startled me from my memory. ‘You knew! Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘Mr Devere wanted to tell you himself, but you wouldn’t give him the chance.’

  That explained why Susan was always promoting his suit to me. ‘I fear the smart thing to do is just surrender to the will of the universe.’

  Everyone seemed to agree it was the wisest thing for me to do.

  I do not think that would be the wisest course. Albray had changed his tune when I spoke to him in my room as I ate breakfast.

  ‘But yesterday you said I should speak with Mr Devere about the travel?’

  You asked for the quickest way to guarantee travel was in your future, he pointed out. This is not the only way, or the best way, if you choose it because you feel it is your only option.

  ‘I would be safer travelling with a husband,’ I reasoned. ‘He can make all my travel plans with no questions asked.’

  And the price of that ticket is your love. Albray spoke frankly. Are you prepared to wear that cost?

  For a moment I thought my knight was talking sense, but then he added: If it is only security you seek, I can award you that.

  He was asking me, in no uncertain terms, if I loved Mr Devere? ‘He is as pleasing as any young man.’ I smiled at Albray who was older than Mr Devere by at least ten years. ‘And our marriage would serve to get my father and everyone else off my back so that we might get some serious study done.’

  You don’t think that being a wife is going to be a distraction to your study?

  I was beginning to wish I had never brought Albray into my personal affairs. ‘What other choice do I have?’

  The red book, he said. I suspect it contains many secrets.

  My heart skipped a beat. If Albray was psychically linked with me then he knew about the vial. ‘Do you know what it contains?’

  It is the key ingredient in the Bread of Life. It is 0 = (+1)+(-1).

  I was frowning. ‘That is a riddle not a sum. When applied to physical matter it’s an impossible equation. You can’t add a negative one to one and be left with nothing. You’ll always have the one.’

  Unless? he prompted.

  ‘Unless nothing, it can’t be done,’ I insisted. He grinned and shook his head as if disappointed by my lack of vision.

  The only way to turn something into nothing, in a material sense, is to transmit that something to another dimension and make it disappear completely from the mundane environment.

  ‘A transformation of matter.’ I caught his meaning. ‘Something like digestion or incineration?’

  Albray nodded.

  Moments later I had unlocked the red book and held the vial of glowing substance in my hands.

  Actually, the substance is affected by heat in a very interesting way. Do you want to see how the Egyptians built the pyramids? Albray piqued my curiosity, and pointed to a footstool. Place that in front of the fire. We’ll pretend that the heat of the fire is the hot Egyptian sun. Take the stopper from the vial and run it quickly along the top of the stool, and keep your thumb over the mouth of the vial until you replace the stopper.

  ‘Does the powder have a bad reaction to air?’ I wondered about the safety precautions as I followed them with care.

  Watch, he suggested, as I replaced the stopper and found a few particles stuck to the back of my thumb. The tiny particles floated upwards off my finger. ‘This substance defies gravity.’ My hand seemed to feel lighter, then I saw that the footstool had begun to rise off the floor. ‘Oh, my god.’ I couldn’t believe it. The tiny particles of light floated above the footstool, towing it into the air. ‘And heat accelerates the properties of this substance?’

  Indeed. Under extreme heat, this substance sends the particles
of anything it is attached to into a highward spin state until they achieve perfect unity and transcend the physical realm . .. when cooled again, they will return the object to its place of origin.

  My eyes were fixed on the floating footstool as I plucked a particle from the air and, placing it on my tongue, I closed my eyes.

  White sand beneath the sandals on my feet. Hot sun above and large pillars ahead supporting the entrance to a mighty dwelling. Dark, straight hair, darker than Susan’s, swept across my face. This was not prophecy; it was past or future life memory! With that thought, the vision departed.

  I placed the precious vial back in its case.

  ‘Tell me, Albray, how is it you know so much about this substance?’ I put my wonder aside for a moment. I realised I didn’t know anything about my otherworldly ally.

  I have escorted that vial to safekeeping before. He became rather mysterious. It was one of two vials. This one contains the life-body, and the other the life-blood, of gods. Together they are known as Star-Fire…you hold the Star in your hand.

  ‘And from where did it originate?’

  During the Albigensian Crusade, my oath to the Prieurè de Sion—the branch of the Temple knights to which I belonged—bound me to escort the Star-Fire safely out of France and back to where it belonged. When I last saw that vial, I was on a mountain in the Holy Land. He seemed to be rather saddened by the fact.

  ‘Serâbit el-Khâdim.’ I named the place I suspected.

  He knew Douglas had told me about the sacred site. Yes.

  ‘Do you think Mr Hamilton intended for me to return this vial there?’ My breath caught in my chest, as the revelation constricted my heart with excitement.

  Yes.

  ‘And you are here to guide me.’ If there was one thing I knew about the Order of knights to which Albray belonged, it was that they knew the way to the Holy Land better than anyone.

  I am a guardian of Star-Fire, its order and its bloodline. He bowed, at my service.

  ‘But I still don’t see how this vial grants me an alternative passage to the Continent?’ I came back to the question at hand.