Lucio took the bag and pulled the plug from the neck.
“Where did you get this?” Lucio frowned.
Vanni dumped the contents of his father’s water glass on the carpet and poured the glass full of the mead.
“The King brought it,” he told him and handed the glass to his father. “He misses me! He came and brought a whole battalion of his finest warriors with him. We were down in the meadow dancing when the one called Luke Andrew found us.”
“Santa Maria!” Lucio had to smile at the thought of Il Dolce Mio. “How is he?”
“He is most excellent,” Vanni said as he sipped the mead directly from the wineskin.
“Go easy on that, son,” Lucio warned as he sipped his own glass. The stuff went down smooth and helped his feelings immensely. “I wish I were feeling better. We would go down and see him.”
“That would be grand.” Vanni stuffed the leather plug back in the bag and slung it over his shoulder. “We could paint you up most excellently and then we could dance and sing together. You and I have never sang and danced together as father and son. Most sad.”
“Yes, it is sad, but it is not the way of our people.” Lucio shrugged and then winced in pain as the movement pulled on the stitches.
“Aha! You are in pain.” Vanni frowned at him. “I suffered much pain when Luke Andrew scrubbed my feet and between my toes. I am not unfamiliar with this condition, pain. I also struck my elbow on the table and I cut myself with the razor and…”
“Wait!” Lucio stopped him. “You should not be using a razor.”
“Oh, yes.” Vanni nodded vigorously. “I have grown hair in some very unnecessary places. Here.” He pointed under his arm. “Here.” He pointed to his chin. “Here.” He pointed to his legs. “And most terribly! Here!” He began to loosen the belt he wore on his jeans. “I will show you!”
“No! No!” Lucio reached to grab his arm, but the motion caused more pain. “I do not have to see to believe, Vanni.”
“I’m sorry, Father.” Vanni caught his arm and helped him sit upright again. “May I see your wound?” he said as he refastened his belt buckle. They say it is quite formidable.”
“Yes. It was.” Lucio told him and pushed the cover from his chest and stomach. “A bit worse than a razor nick or a barked shin. I will allow you to look so that you can see what can happen to you if you are not careful. The world is a dangerous place.”
“Like this wound on your arm?” Vanni rubbed one hand over the double scar on his forearm.
“Yes, but worse things can happen.” Lucio raised his shirt and the boy gasped in horror.
He leaned over his father’s stomach and peered closely at the black sutures and the pink scar.
“You have strings holding you together.” He backed away in terror. “This will never do! I must summon the Gruguach! I must summon the King!”
“No.” Lucio laughed at him. “It is all right now. It is healing. Tomorrow it will be gone.”
“Did this man cut you through the middle then?” Vanni came back to look at the thing again. “And did he put this string in you?”
“He cut me, but Planxty sewed it up. It is how men do it.”
“Oh, no. No. No. It cannot be.” Vanni sank to the floor. “Please, Father. If ever I am cut open or sliced in twain, do not allow anyone to sew me like a pair of breeches. Just leave me in pieces!”
Lucio sat staring at the top of his son’s head as he wept into the quilt. Everything had seemed only a terribly painful nightmare until now and the innocent tears of his son brought the irony and the ludicrous nature of what had happened into focus. Why! Who had come here to kill him and why? And just when Catharine de Goth arrived? It did not quite make sense… not yet! He vaguely remembered her presence and the nature of that presence in that she was pleading with someone, most likely his murderer either for his life, her life or both.
It did not seem possible that her presence at that precise moment could have been coincidence. And though it might seem plausible that her brother would have come to kill him and she after him to stop him, it did not have the feel of truth. Lucio distinctly remembered hearing a voice crying out ‘who are you?’ Catharine would surely have recognized her own brother. Further, even had he been completely disguised, she would have known it was her brother who had come to kill him if she had subsequently come to save him. No, he did not believe that Catharine had come with the intent to murder him, nor did he believe that it had been Eduord de Goth who had committed the crime. He believed that someone else had invaded the house at the precise moment when they knew that Catharine would be there and that, possibly, they had mistaken him to be Simon, her son, since the Healer had also been in the house sleeping when the crime had taken place.
Perhaps, the murderer had intended to use Simon against his mother. But to what end? He strained his brain to remember more, but the only words that came to him again and again were most likely the products of his troubled brain at the time of hearing them. ‘Lucio, my brother. Lucio, my love.’ He remembered these words. They rang over and over in his head.
“Vanni!” Lucio placed one hand on his son’s tousled curls. “Get up here with me and stop crying. No one is going to cut you to pieces or sew you up. Now tell me more about the elves and the King.”
Vanni stood slowly and climbed on the bed with his father, dragging the heavy wineskin with him. He wiped at his eyes and his face relaxed a bit.
“The King…” he sniffed and then frowned again “the King says that terrible dangers are approaching us. He told me to tell you that he is at the service of Lord Adar and will come to his aid when called upon. He has heard many rumors coming from the Tuathan camps about the fulfillment of prophecies concerning their descendancy and ascendancy. I do not understand these words, Father. He said the Tribe of Danu would ascend again. Ascend to where? Where would they go, Father?”
“I don’t know.” Lucio slid down in the bed and sighed. He was still very weak. The Tribe of Danu. The words held a familiar ring. “Who is the Tribe of Danu?”
“The Tuatha de Danann, of course!” Vanni told him with wide eyes. “They are the fair-haired ones of old. They were banished to the Underworld by the old kings of the islands. They are not really elves, you know. The King told me this. Il Dolce Mio says that the Tuatha do not belong in the Underworld. He says that they came there ages and ages ago after a great battle with men and that his father, the King, helped to banish them from the Emerald Isle.”
“You mean that Alexander Corrigan is not an elf? That he is a Merovingian?” Lucio sat up straighter and then winced.
“That is what I am telling you, si`!” Vanni nodded. “The King says that the Tuatha are waiting to come back and take what they lost in this world. He says that they simply look like elves because they have lived so long in the Underworld. That is why they do not have a kingdom there… not a real one. Not like the Center or the North or the South or the East or the West. They live on the borders of the Center and the West. The King says that they also lived on the borders of the Center and the East at one time, but the King of the East rose up against them and the King of the Center, Il Dolce Mio’s grandfather on his mother’s side was killed in that war in which he allied with the King of the East.”
“Santa Maria!” Lucio slapped his palm against his forehead. “This might put a whole new twist on Biblical Scriptures. Kings of the North. Kings of the East.” Lucio could not think of it all.
Here they had been trying to apply these titles to men. Trying to figure out which nation might be the north or the south when these were the actual names of the kingdoms of the underworld.
“Santa Maria!” Vanni slapped his palm against his forehead in imitation of his father and Il Dolce Mio.
Lucio sat staring at his son. But if Alexander was d’Brouchart’s son and Simon of Grenoble’s brother, who was Alexander’s mother?
“Vanni?” Lucio calmed down a bit. “Do you know whose son King Corrigan is?”
> “He is the son of Nebo! The great Lord of the Second Gate. Nebo, father of Naboplasser and grandfather of Nebucchadnezzar, the Great Persian Kings of old. He is your ancestor father.” Vanni beamed. “That is where we come by our own Royal blood. We are descendants of the Lord of the Second Gate.”
Lucio felt very dizzy.
“Of course you are very far removed from Nebucchadnezzar, but the ancestry can be traced back directly through your father’s father’s father’s father’s father’s father’s…”
“Enough!” Lucio held up one hand. “How do you know all of this, my son?”
“I was very good in history,” Vanni explained. “I am also good in math and science, though I never learned to read until yesterday. We had no books.”
“Santa Maria,” Lucio muttered.
“And this Nebo, you have seen him?” Lucio narrowed his eyes at the boy.
“Of course. He was just here.” Vanni frowned at him.
“What?! Here? In the house?” Lucio fell back against the pillows and groaned.
“The red-haired one.” Vanni shook his head sadly. “You are in great distress, my father. Would you wish more mead?”
“Yes. Please.” Lucio found his empty glass and held it out to his son and the boy filled it from the skin. The Italian drank it down. “Now, one last question. Who is King Corrigan’s mother?”
“She is called the Morrigan. The washer at the river. A hideous hag… most of the time.” Vanni shuddered. “I have never seen her, but I have heard tales of her. The Morrigan helped the Tuatha de Danaan when they first came to the Emerald Isle. She helped them to defeat the Fir Bolgs with great mists and showers of fire and blood. You do not know this story? It is of far distant things in the past before the reckoning of time when the sun could not be seen through the mists and the Great Atlantis drifted in the sea, land of Kings, Sons of Light, all things men and elves come from there, Father. The Morrigan came from Atlantis. She disguised her beauty by day and only became radiant under the light of the ancient moon. Did you know that the moon used to be much closer to us than it is now?”
“So, if she is so hideous, how did she… I mean how is it that she came to know d’Brouchart… Nebo?” Lucio frowned.
“She is not always ugly, as I said, but sometimes appears as a beautiful female,” Vanni told him, lowering his voice as if this were a great secret. “Father, what is a beautiful female? Is Greta a beautiful female or is Aunt Merry a beautiful female?”
“They are both beautiful, Vanni.” Lucio closed his eyes.
“Then it would make sense that the mighty Nebo would have liked the Morrigan,” Vanni stated conclusively. “I like Greta very much and if there are many more like her, then I would like them as well.”
“Beauty does not necessarily mean that a woman is likeable,” Lucio told him tiredly. “It is inner beauty that makes a person likable. Greta is beautiful on the inside as well as the outside. That is why you like her.”
“Oh. And Aunt Merry?”
“She is fairly beautiful on the inside.” Lucio smiled at his son. He could not believe what he had just learned from this highly intelligent, but pitifully ignorant boy.
“And the other… the one that they sent away… is she also beautiful on the inside?” Vanni asked him.
“That remains to be seen.” Lucio held out his glass for more mead. Vanni was right. The mead was helping tremendously.
(((((((((((((
Nicholas glanced at his brother as the younger strutted about under the olive trees, slashing at shadows with his sword.
Nicholas had dragged Gregory out to the groves to observe what he said was a time of meditation and reflection. The elder brother was determined not to allow the younger to forget his upbringing and his roots. These men here were full of inaccuracies laced and glazed over with false dogma. He had promised his grandmother, the wise Semiramis, that he would not forget her, nor would he forget what she had taught him about the history of the world.
“You are supposed to be in contemplative thought, Gregory!” Nicholas admonished him and then adjusted the hilt of his sword against his side. It had been poking him. It was difficult to think under these circumstances. Nothing was ever right or easy here as it had been in the Hesperides.
“I find it hard to concentrate when bugs buzz around my head,” Gregory told him. “Besides, I thought we would be of use to our grandfather. What use is this sitting and twiddling our thumbs in class when there are battles to be fought and enemies to vanquish? Do they not know what is coming?”
“I think some of them know, but much has been buried… lost and confused here. Their stories are garbled. They all believe different lies. None of them know the truth… whole truth. That is why we must set aside time to collect our thoughts. We must not allow their thinking to become ours.” Nicholas turned his handsome face up to the brilliant globe of the moon that was peeking through the gnarled limbs over his head.
“How is this?” Gregory spun around, dropped on one knee and lunged at his invisible foe. “There! See your bowels before you, evil one! Now I will burn them in the eternal fire while you watch!”
Nicholas sighed and dropped his head. Gregory was too full of energy for meditation. Nicholas wanted to slay someone! Nicholas had no patience for ignorance. His idea was that all ignorance should be wiped out at the roots. Their grandmother had told them that Gregory reminded her of one of the ancient heroes of men called Alexander, the Macedonian. Alexander had conquered half the world before his thirtieth birthday. Gregory was rapidly approaching that same age and he had conquered nothing but a few lizards and snakes.
“Gregory, please.” Nicholas pushed himself up and his brother approached him cautiously with the sword held point up, clutched close against his left side with a familiar smirk on his face. “Gregory! I don’t want to play.”
“Fight me, you bastard!” Gregory challenged him and began to circle him. His silky hair lay long on his shoulders and his blue eyes sparkled with mischief. He was a bit shorter than his stocky brother and lighter, but he was not to be discounted when it came to sword play. “Come out of your evil hole and stand before me! Meet your doom and your fate!”
Nicholas drew his sword slowly and held it in much the same manner as his brother as they circled each other warily. They practiced with naked blades here as they did in the Hesperides. Very dangerous, but neither of them had ever seriously injured the other. A few nicks, cuts and bruises.
Nicholas stepped in and brought his sword down and around. Gregory parried the blow and leaped back out of reach before quickly returning with a great cry and lunge at his brother’s midsection. He grazed Nicholas’ shirt and they heard the sound of ripping cloth.
“Aha! I have drawn first blood!” Gregory spun around and caught the flat of his older brother’s blade upside his right temple. Stars danced in front of his eyes momentarily.
“And!” Nicholas knocked him on his back and put one foot on his chest with the point of his sword at his throat. “You are a dead man!”
“That’s not fair!” Gregory told him in disgust.
“Death is not fair, brother,” Nicholas grumbled as he held out his hand to help him up.
Gregory bent to brush the dirt from his slacks and then combed his hair with his fingers.
“You are improving!” the younger told the older. “Or else I am slipping. You should practice with me more often or else you will allow me to be killed right away and then how would your conscience pain you? You promised our grandmother that you would look after me and here you are killing me!”
Nicholas shook his head. Gregory was impossible at all times. He opened his mouth to retort and then froze.
“Down!” he hissed and dropped to a crouch in the shadow of the ancient tree’s trunk.
Nicholas dropped immediately beside his brother and turned silently on his toes in the soft, pebbly earth.
They could see four men, very darkly clad, flitting through the tree
s on the opposite side of the drive. They ran from trunk to trunk, staying in the shadows, making their way in complete silence toward the Villa.
“What is this?” Nicholas muttered the question.
“The enemy,” Gregory breathed the word.
“We’ll follow and see what they are about before we confront them,” Nicholas instructed his brother. “Have a care, brother. This is not a drill.”
They waited until the men had passed further on up the hill and then jumped the stone fence in pursuit of their stealthy quarries. As they hurried after the men, they discovered that they had underestimated their foe. The men ahead of them moved very swiftly and were soon out of sight, but they made another frightening discovery. There were more than four. They saw three more on the other side of the drive from whence they had just come and when they stopped to survey this, they saw four more coming up the hill behind them.
“We are greatly outnumbered,” Gregory told his brother as if he could not see this fact.
“This way!” Nicholas cut off at a tangent, intending to circle about and enter the Villa from the south near the Knight’s quarters. They would need to waken the others and Sir Barry was his first thought.
They reached the long, low building housing the Knight’s quarters and found Barry asleep, but fully dressed. The Seneschal was up in a flash and armed within seconds. They roused Lavon de Bleu and Christopher Stewart. Louis had retired to his own apartment and they could not reach him without crossing the moonlit courtyard in plain view. Christopher produced a cell phone and called the Frankish Knight’s private number, apprising him of the danger. The attackers had not entered the main building, but had headed instead for the center of the complex where the more vulnerable members of the Order resided. The students and the medical building. The priest and his assistants. The mortals.
Barry led them along at a rapid, but quiet pace. Each of them wielding swords and daggers now in addition to more convention modern weapons.
They heard shouts and cries from the dormitory and simultaneous explosions from the chapel and the priest’s refectory.
Thoth, the Atlantean Page 29