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

by Brendan Carroll

  “Ow, ouch!” he said in earnest when his sock feet met the rock drive. He held onto her shoulder and then hopped over to the cool, green grass growing along the side of the drive. 'Home' was an impressive red brick, colonial mansion with three floors full floors plus dormers and a wide, snowy white portico across the center front with wide steps leading down to the drive. The house was nestled in a jungle of green plants, trees and flowering shrubbery.

  The blond giggled and offered her arm again, as he stood first on one foot and then the other picking the rocks from his socks.

  "Candy-ass!" Maxie grumbled. He stood watching disgustedly from a few feet away with his pistol trained on Mark's midsection.

  Mark ignored him and looked up at the house again. It was disturbing to see wrought-iron bars over all the windows. He pushed the thoughts this sight caused aside as his stomach made another feeble attempt to kill him.

  “Come on, Mark Andrew; don't pay any attention to Maxie. He's uncouth.” The Pixie tugged on his arm and he followed her around the edge of the drive, keeping to the grass until they reached the brick walk in front of the house.

  Inside the foyer, the Pixie turned on the man.

  “You can go,” she told him. “Sir Ramsay will be fine with me. He’s not going anywhere. Are you?”

  She looked at him and he shook his head. What else could he do?

  Maxie rolled his eyes, muttered under his breath and backed away from them.

  She started off toward a corridor that led under the wide curving staircase and he hurried after her, catching her arm.

  “I don’t even know your name,” he told her when she stopped.

  “You can call me Sister Discretion,” she laughed at the apparent irony of the name and then dragged him down the corridor.

  Maxie followed at a distance, but had put away the weapon. Mark tried to watch Maxie when he stopped near the main staircase. The man unlocked a nondescript door underneath the stairs and disappeared inside, slamming it loudly behind him. Mark debated whether to make a break for it.

  “This way to the kitchen,” she told him as they continued on down the hall.

  This last announcement made up his mind. He’d deal with the goon later.

  The house appeared deserted and he wondered where the woman was that she had spoken to on the cell phone from the car. Everywhere were flower vases full of fresh flowers of every description color and scent. Silk and satin banners covered the walls of the corridor, each one brilliantly colored and decorated with strange symbols and emblems. They entered a huge butler pantry full of shelves packed with food. He resisted the urge to grab a bag of potato crisps and tear into them and followed her through another swinging door into an expansive kitchen fit for a king. The first stop was a small hand sink on one wall where she handed him a bottle of soap.

  “Here. Better wash up a bit,” she smiled at him and brushed another bit of grass from his shoulder. “We’re a mess.” Her exuberant attitude was baffling and he wanted to ask her why she was so damned happy.

  He looked at his bruised wrists and blood-smeared hands and wondered again what his face looked like. There was no mirror here and the shiny surfaces gave him only a vague idea of what he might look like. He took the soap and washed his hands while listening to her talk about germs and bacteria, disease and third world countries while trying in vain to see himself in the reflective surface of the sink fixtures, but his image was too distorted to make out clearly. When he had washed and dried his hands, she escorted him to a counter covered with gleaming pink granite.

  He sat on a barstool and watched while she opened a set of double doors set in the dark, wood-grained cabinets. The doors revealed a huge refrigerator, stuffed with more food. He felt his mouth water and his stomach growled persistently when she came back with an armload of items: sliced roast beef, cheese, mustard, lettuce, pickles and olives. He picked up the olive jar and began eating them immediately while she went for bread and a knife from another cabinet.

  She talked incessantly about someone named Valentino. The roast beef was Valentino’s favorite sandwich and the Swiss cheese was her favorite. Valentino liked mayonnaise. She preferred mustard. Valentino liked white bread. She liked wheat. The olives were gone by the time she had cut two slices from a loaf of brown bread. He picked up the pickle jar and watched while she spread the mustard on the bread and then layered it with roast beef, cheese and lettuce. When she picked up the knife and began to cut it carefully in half, he shook his head in exasperation and slid the sandwich across the bar. She began to work on her own sandwich while still talking. She should not be talking. She should be quiet!

  He wondered vaguely what day of the week it was and whether he should refrain from eating the meat, but considered these circumstances more than mitigating as he tore into the sandwich. Her talking seemed more and more out of order. He tried to eat and listen to her, but couldn’t manage both at once. His sandwich was gone before she took the first bite of her skimpy cheese concoction. He picked up the knife and cut two more pieces of bread. He looked down at the bread knife in his hand and up at her as she sat on another of the stools watching him with open curiosity. It would have been easy to kill her and leave the way he had come. He had no doubt that he could take the big guy, but something nagged at the back of his brain. Why was he really here? He glanced around and decided to wait a bit before making a move. Besides, he didn’t really want to kill her and he wondered why the thought had crossed his mind at all. Was he really an assassin?

  He turned his attention to the sandwich and piled on the meat and cheese.

  “Wait,” she protested and slid off the stool, making another trip to the refrigerator.

  She brought a pitcher of something light yellow and a bottle of red wine back to the counter and took down two glasses.

  No drinking at the table. No talking at the table. He caught her arm and shook his head while biting into the second sandwich.

  “Oh, I forgot.” She put one hand over her mouth. “No drinking with the food, right?”

  He nodded and then shook his head.

  “Oh, right,” she giggled. “No talking either.”

  It was not a laughing matter. Of all the things he could not remember, why was this so important?

  She waited patiently with a look of amusement in her eyes as he ate yet another sandwich just as big as the first two. When the last bite was gone, she slid off the stool and took his hand. He was beautiful even with blood all over his face. His eyes were deep blue with long black lashes and though his hair was tangled and full of debris from the pecan grove, it was silky and shiny black. Certainly Cecile had been right. He was much better looking than Anthony although several years older. Furthermore, he didn’t seem to be overly aggressive, but almost shy. It was incredible to think that he actually seemed more afraid of her than Maxie.

  He grabbed the bottle of wine and followed her again to a smaller set of stairs leading up from the kitchen. When they were on the staircase, she started talking again. He turned up the bottle and drank half of it. It was not very good. Too dry for his tastes, but it was wet. Dry. Wet. Hot. Cold. And so, hot as well as cold, dry as well as moist, before all other medicines of Physicians. Fire. Air. Water. Earth. Ignus. Ayer. Aqua. Terra. He shook his head as these strange words drifted into his mind from somewhere in his past.

  “Valentino has tried to teach me about you guys,” she told him. “I just forgot about the eating thing. You’ll have to forgive me, but it doesn’t matter anyway. I won't tell. It just doesn’t make sense to me. I get some of my best thoughts during meals. How can I let them slip away? If I don't say them out loud, I'll forget them.”

  Templars again. She was insane. She was hallucinating or delusional. The thought occurred to him again that they must have had him confused with someone else. It was the only logical explanation. Perhaps he had wrecked his car and these two nuts had found him in the ditch? He had seen it in the movies. Christopher had insisted. Christopher. Christoph
er?

  “She told me all about the battles,” she said as she led him along the upstairs hall. “It must have been awful. Were you at the battle of the Horns of Hattin?”

  He caught her arm and spun her around. “What do you know of Hattin?”

  “Nothing!”

  She looked up at him in surprise. The mention of the ancient battle confused and confounded him. He could smell the burning brushfires and hear the screams of the soldiers as the enemy charged up the hillside, killing and hacking everything and everyone to bits, even the horses. “She just told me that it was horrible. No survivors. The infidels killed everyone.”

  “Not true,” he objected and shook his head. “There were survivors.” How did he know?

  “Then you were there.” Her face lit up.

  “Perhaps. When did it occur?” He asked hoping to gain another to clue to his identity.

  She stopped and frowned fiercely. “Let me see…. I know. 1187! There. You see. I have been studying you.”

  “Did you say eleven eighty-seven?” He asked as she continued up the stairs.

  “Yes. I'm good with numbers usually."

  She glanced back at him and he nodded. She was insane. That would make him…. How old? “Twelfth century, yes, I’m sure of it.”

  “What is today’s date?” he asked her suddenly and she laughed.

  “You must be kidding,” she answered.

  “Of course. I’m a regular comedian,” he said sourly.

  He turned up the bottle and finished off the wine. They stopped in front of a carved oaken door and he was treated to eye candy for dessert as she unpinned a key from inside her dress. The room was opulent, like a faery tale and it made a lovely backdrop for the Pixie. All white and gold, light colored woods with flowers and ribbons and cherubs painted on the drawers and tables. The central attraction was a huge canopy bed, hung with gossamer draperies and littered with gold and white, tasseled pillows and cushions.

  She pulled him past the bed to the far side of the room where three marble steps led up to an equally well-appointed bath done in gold and white. She turned on the water and the Jacuzzi jets in the tub and poured liquids from several different bottles and jars into the swirling water. The scent of vanilla and cinnamon filled the room. She went around the room lighting candles while he stood silently watching her. He had to get away. She was a witch and he would soon be under her spell without hope of escape. He had to dispatch the man downstairs, steal the keys to the car and leave…

  All thoughts of Maxie and what he wanted to do to the man left him when she pulled the dress over her head, slipped the flimsy wisp of lace that passed for underwear down her legs and stepped into the tub. He blinked at her in dazed silence. This was not right. He should not be here. He drew a deep breath at the sight of her standing before him in the shell-shaped Jacuzzi like Botticelli’s Venus come to life.

  The scene before him wavered and was replaced by another image. A colorful tiled pool in the middle of a magnificent room, no, a courtyard, surrounded by billowing draperies of soft lavender, white and gold. The tiles were covered with blood and the water in the pool was tinted pink with it. The body of a man floated face down near the bottom of the pool. The woman had killed him. She turned to look at him with the murderous knife still in her hand. Blood, dark crimson, dripped from the blade to the tiles. Her dark eyes grew wide with fear when they locked with his. A red haze covered his vision when she threw off the veil covering the lower half of her face and began to scream. He drew his dagger from his belt, took a step toward her and fell up the steps of the Pixie’s bath. She knelt beside him.

  “I didn’t realize that you were exhausted. Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked him and began to undress him where he lay. His mind reeled from the blow his head had taken on the tub during the fall. He pressed one hand against his head and felt a knot already in evidence under his hair. “What you need is a hot bath and a good night’s rest… a good Knight’s rest. You are a good Knight, aren’t you?”

  He pushed himself up and sat on the steps, trying to help her as she removed his blood and dirt-stained shirt. The vision was ridiculous. She was right about the bath. He felt gritty all over. She was talking again about the very same subjects as before. Fantasy. She was obsessed with knights and crusaders and the fairy realm. This time she spoke of nymphs and faeries and flowers and crowns and love. It was useless to try to follow the disjointed, one-sided conversation.

  The warm water in the tub felt wonderful on his back where the tree had scourged him, though it stung a bit. She washed his face while she talked and this was not pleasant at all as the soap entered the cut. She blew on it as if he were a child when he winced and then set about washing his hair with her fragrant shampoo again bringing pain to his newly acquired bump. Certainly he would be most beautiful when she finished. He closed his eyes and tried to remember something, anything. Ohhhhh, ahhhh, my lovely angel, you are most beautiful! A different voice spoke to him. A soft, sing-song male voice with a decidedly eastern accent.

  Suddenly, he remembered where he was. The flight had been long and nerve-wracking.

  “America!” he said, interrupting her chatter.

  “Yes, of course,” she nodded. “Texas. The best part. Like a whole other country,” she used a quote from a popular advertisement of the day. “And you have such a cute accent. I love that Scottish brogue. How do you do that with your R’s? Let me see.”

  She took his face in her hands and opened his mouth, peering inside comically. While he was digesting this newest bit of useful information about where he was and the affirmation of his nationality, she clamped her mouth over his and kissed him while simultaneously sliding against him. Her body was silky, smooth with fragrant oil and felt like heaven pressing against him. He put his arms around her and they almost sank under the water.

  “Are you stuck on threes or do you count higher?” she asked when they had righted themselves.

  “I can count. I hold a Master’s degree from… from…” he said, somewhat confused by her question and she cut off his thoughts with another kiss. “Why?” He finished lamely when she let him breathe again.

  “Can you count to four?” she asked, speaking directly into his mouth.

  He had to push her back to answer. “One, two, three, four. Why?”

  “Good. Let me show you.” She lowered her head and looked at him from under her brows as she ran one hand down his chest and his stomach, under the water. She wrapped one arm around his neck and slipped her silken legs about his waist. “Four is a significant number.”

  “I see,” he had to agree with her though he felt hopelessly entangled in something he did not understand.

  He would think more on it later. She was too busy showing him the significance of the number four at the moment. It seemed that he had not had a woman in more years than he cared to count, but with his almost instant response to her, he could not imagine why not. Had he been in prison, perhaps? Was he an escaped convict? Could that explain his seemingly insatiable sexual appetite? Not to mention his gastronomic appetite. Surely, it would not explain hers… unless she, too, was an escaped convict. Perhaps they had escaped from the same prison… or mental hospital. He almost laughed aloud. Insane asylum, he corrected himself mentally.

  ((((((((((((()))))))))))))

  Mark Andrew stood in front of the golden mirrors above the marble counter, wrapped in a sinfully elegant, oversized seafoam green towel, looking at his reflection in the glass. He was shocked to see the stranger looking back at him. Somehow, though he could not begin to imagine how, he knew that this was not how he was supposed to look. He couldn’t say how he should have looked, but this man was a complete and total stranger to him. Surely even amnesiacs recognized their own reflections. He remembered how to walk and talk and how to brush his teeth. His dark, almost black, hair hung was shoulder length, straight and lustrous. He had no beard, but the need for a shave indicated that his sojourn with these two crazies had been v
ery brief. His eyes were so blue they shocked him as they stared back from under dark eyebrows on either side of his long, straight nose. Blue eyes. Blue eyes. They did not seem right. His mouth was broad and his lips were full, but not overly feminine. He smiled at himself and saw a nice set of white teeth.

  Thank God! He hated rotten teeth. And then wondered where that thought had come from. He had a fair amount of black hair on his chest that trailed down his stomach and disappeared under the towel. Overall, he was pleased with his appearance though somewhat surprised. He felt much, much older than he looked. With a start, he realized he had no idea just what his age might have been though he had expected wrinkles or visible crow’s feet at the very least. He leaned toward the mirror looking for lines and creases in his face. There were a couple of very slight lines across his forehead and not more than two or three crinkles near the outer corners of his eyes. Thirty-five? Forty? Twenty-nine? Who could tell?

  The wound above his eye was not deep and looked healthy enough after the bath. No sign of infection… yet. It would heal without being sewn. He shuddered at the thought. Wounds in the area near the brow bone, no matter how small, usually produce copious amounts of blood and may or may not leave a scar depending upon the complexion of the man. His face was either deeply tanned or he was dark complected. Shouldn't leave a noticeable scar. This thought came in the form of a sonorous voice that echoed hollowly in his head, accompanied by a tiny flash of a scene wherein he sat in a small, stuffy indoor amphitheater, watching an old man in a blood-stained apron examine a grotesque corpse lying on a porcelain table. A doctor? Was he a doctor?

  He checked his hands for calluses or other telltale signs of his occupation and looked closely at the rings again, but no further memories assaulted him. His hands were smooth, nails trimmed and clean with the only discernable calluses in the web of his right hand and palm just below his little finger. He could find no significant scars, no tattoos, but there was one very pronounced scar on the right side of his stomach just under his ribcage. About two inches long and a quarter inch wide. The skin there was darker and slightly elevated by old scar tissue. It had the appearance of a knife wound or primitive surgery, perhaps? But there were no signs of the scars created by the crude stitching that usually accompanied such surgical wounds. Why primitive? Whatever had caused it must have been painful.