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

by Brendan Carroll

  “You are here with the others looking for him,” she told him. “You would take him back with you whether he wants to go or not.”

  “It is the Will of God,” Dambretti told her, irritating her beyond measure. “He must go back. There is no alternative. He will come to his senses. I know he will.”

  “Everything is the Will of God to you,” she said scornfully. “Why? Can’t a person actually have a will of their own?”

  “Of course,” he waved one hand in the dim light of the small flashlight. “Man has his own free will, but whatever he chooses has already been seen by God and is, therefore, the Will of God. There is nothing a man can do but the Will of God.”

  “That is a circular argument, sir,” she shook her head. The light was growing dimmer as the battery in the flashlight faded.

  Dambretti unwrapped the bandages on his hands as he spoke in a calm voice.

  “Circles are good. Spirals are better. I will help you,” he told her and reached for her hands. She watched as he pulled the bloody gauze from his hands. “This will give you better traction and protect your delicate skin.” He smiled at her. Somehow the comment coming from him did not seem belittling or insulting, just thoughtful. He took her hands and turned them over before kissing her palms gently.

  “Thank you,” she said quietly, ashamed now of talking to him in such rude tones.

  “Do you love Mark Andrew?” he asked her casually as he wrapped the bloody cloth around her hands.

  The question startled her.

  “No,” she answered too quickly.

  “Then why are you so angry with him?” The quizzical Italian asked her and looked into her eyes. “You would not care one way or another if he left, unless you care for him.”

  “I didn’t say I didn’t care for him,” she retorted. “I said I didn’t love him.”

  “But you do.” He touched her chin with one finger and brought her eyes back to him in the fading light. “I can see it in your… eyes. You have a beautiful soul. Unlike any other.”

  She said nothing, but looked down at the rags on her hands.

  “Did he tell you that he loves you?” he asked her.

  She nodded.

  “And so he does and that is too bad, but it doesn’t change anything,” he said. “Now hurry. Our Brothers are drowning.”

  She sighed and leaped once more for the chains. The gauze helped more than she would have imagined. Dambretti managed to hook the chain link over the cog and they were in business. They took turns cranking the handle. Blood oozed from the Knight’s hands, but he did not complain. Merry figured he chalked it up to the Will of God.

  The higher the door rose, the faster the water poured out of the adjoining room. It was soon above their knees and rising rapidly.

  Merry looked about in panic at the rising deluge. There was, apparently, more water inside the chamber than outside.

  “What will happen?” she whispered as they cranked on the rusted thing in unison.

  “Who knows but God?” He shrugged and she cringed.

  When the water reached their waists, they had to abandon the cave before they were trapped.

  “They won’t drown, right?” she asked him as they waded toward the rapidly closing space between the lower levels and the upper cave.

  “Come on, give me your hand,” he pulled her along more quickly.

  “You didn’t answer my question,” she said as the water rose toward her neck.

  “The apprentice is not immortal, if that is what you are asking,” he said simply. “He could die.”

  ((((((((((((()))))))))))))

  As soon as Mark Andrew reached the rusty metal door in the side of the hill, he knew something was terribly wrong. Water flowed out of the cave and ran away down the hill behind him. He dropped the chain on the ground and peered into the darkness.

  “Merry! Lucio!” he shouted into the dark opening, but his voice no longer echoed in the passage. It was filling with water. He knelt near the entrance and looked for footprints, but the water was sheeting over the sandy soil behind the boulders, completely obliterating any signs of their passage. He waded down into the cave and was unable to go more than few dozen feet before the water was at neck level.

  They couldn’t have stayed down there. He sloshed back out the entrance and looked about in the rain, squinting against the water pouring down his face into his eyes. The lightning was diminishing somewhat and he had to wait for the intermittent flashes to light the area.

  “Damn you, Lucio! Where have you taken her?” he said aloud and brushed at his face futilely with his left hand. The lightning glinted off the blade of the golden sword now in his right hand.

  “Have you also taken up cursing as well?” a voice spoke to him from his left. He spun around, slinging water out from his hair and clothing. He only got a glimpse of Beaujold, standing near the pile of boulders with his sword raised.

  “What have you done with them?!” he shouted at the fleeting figure.

  “I might ask you the same, Brother,” the man’s voice was muffled by the rain. The lightning flashed and Beaujold lunged at him with his broadsword.

  Mark jumped back as the sword slashed through the rain, missing his chest by less than a hairsbreadth. He stumbled back and pulled the dagger from his pocket with difficulty. The lightning worked against him as he raced around the opposite side of the boulder. He drew up short when the Knight of the Sword appeared in front of him again. He had to duck quickly as the heavy broadsword swooped over his head. He fell on one knee and jabbed at the man’s ankle. The blade entered the Knight’s boot just above the ankle causing him to scream and jerk backwards. Mark held onto the dagger long enough to pull it free and then scrambled away, slipping in the mud as the broadsword’s blade came down in another deadly swing. The tip of the sword struck the ground directly in front of him and then darkness engulfed them.

  Mark continued to crab backwards in the dark until he felt the rock wall behind his back. He pushed himself up, waiting for the next flash of light to find his adversary. When the light came it was brief and he saw nothing of the man. The rain fell in slanted streaks. Mark blinked rapidly and looked about. Nothing. He did not know which way to go. He closed his eyes briefly and then began to slide along the rock face to his right. Right was always his choice. The devil was left-handed. He came against an obstructing block of limestone and edged out to go around it. The next bolt of lightning illuminated the Knight of the Sword, once again, standing directly in front of him and to his right, proving his theory about the devil. Beaujold had moved to his left which put him directly in front of the Knight of Death. The silver blade struck the limestone where Mark’s head had been only a split second before and darkness engulfed them again.

  Mark ended up sitting on the slippery ground with his back to the wall. He stayed down and slid forward, away from the rock face, past his foe, swiping blindly at his side with the golden sword as he went. He felt the blade strike a glancing blow on the Knight’s ribs and heard the man cry out in pain again. Ramsay continued down the hill, slipping and sliding in the loose rock and rubble mixed with water as far as he dared before stopping. He turned on his stomach and jabbed the dagger in the earth for a handhold, trying to catch a glimpse of the man behind him. A stream of rubble and mud washed against him, blinding him momentarily, but he saw nothing of the Frenchman. He had moved… somewhere. Mark crouched on the ground turning around and around holding up his sword and dagger defensively, allowing the drenching ran to wash the mud from his face and eyes. Could the Knight of the Sword see in the dark? Was night vision one of his mysteries?

  Chapter Ten of Twelve

  Let their habitation be desolate.

  Merry stumbled up the path, finally clearing the tumble of rocks and brush, she stopped on the relatively flat ground at the top of the hill. Normally, the view would have been spectacular here, overlooking the valley below, but the rain sheeted relentlessly over the land, cutting the visibility almost to ze
ro. Lucio slipped along behind her, gingerly trying to keep his balance, trying to avoid grabbing onto the bushes and rocks with his injured hands. She had tied one of the gauze strips to their wrists to keep from losing him in the dark since he was also having trouble with the oversized trousers that had become like lead weights around his legs. Twice, he had to stop and pull them up when they fell to his ankles. Had not their situation been so desperate, it might have been comical. At the moment, he was dangerously slowing their pace. Merry was afraid half the hillside would give way in the flashflood if the rain continued. She had seen it happen before. They could be buried under tons of rock and mud. Worse yet, she knew that Mark Andrew was somewhere below them without the slightest idea of where they had gone for safety.

  “This way!” Merry shouted to him above the drumming rain.

  She led him across the hill top to a strange little building that looked like a big thimble or an upended cup sitting on the barren landscape.

  “What is that?” He asked her when he caught up with her on the smoother ground. He cinched up his belt yet again and grimaced at the thought of how he must have looked. His hair hung in ringlets around his face and his boots were filled with water.

  “It used to be part of the shelter,” she told him. “There was a bunch of equipment in there for the ventilation and wiring, but we took it out and made an observatory out of it.”

  “An observatory?” he asked as they hurried along. It was a good place for a watch tower.

  She unhooked the latch on the wooden door and pulled it open. It was dark inside, but relatively dry and much warmer. The lightning, which continued to strike the rocks and surrounding hillsides showed a narrow wooden staircase spiraling up the walls of the circular structure. She shined the light all around the dirt floor and the steps. When he asked what she was looking for, she said “tarantulas and scorpions” and his heart skipped a beat. He could handle snakes, frogs, flies, mosquitoes and any number of wild creatures, but of all the things that God had created why these two? Big hairy spiders. Scorpions! Just what they needed to make the evening complete.

  Finding none in residence, they clumped up the steps, feeling their way between flashes until they reached a trap door at the top of the stairs. She unlatched the door and it swung down to meet them. The last leg of the climb was a short ladder attached to the wall. They climbed into the top of the building and Lucio saw the roof was made of glass. He fell onto the floor on his back and looked up at the clouds and the rain as bolts of lightning streaked across the stormy sky showing a roiling storm raging above them. Merry went immediately to a cabinet built into the wall and rummaged about in the drawers and shelves. Presently, she returned with a small lantern and a striker. Soon they were sitting on the wooden floor staring at each other in the yellow light of a antique kerosene lantern. The water continued to drip from the tendrils of their hair into their faces and a cool breeze wafted through under the open eaves. Merry blew the water from her upper lip and shook her head, slinging water from her hair.

  “Hey!” The Italian frowned at her. “I’m wet enough already.”

  “What do you think happened to Mark?” she asked him when they had caught their breath. She shivered in the chill air and could not remember ever having been more miserable in her life. “And don’t say it’s the Will of God.”

  Lucio smiled at her.

  “I don’t know,” he told her honestly. “He should have been back before we left.”

  “It was raining awfully hard,” she said offhandedly. “Maybe he lost his way. Maybe he couldn’t find the chain.”

  “Maybe he found something he was not looking for,” Lucio voiced her fears for her. “He has been delayed, but not from being lost. He would never get lost. What happened to Anthony Scalia?” He added the question as if an afterthought.

  “I… don’t know,” she said. “Cecile told me that he left. I don’t know if that’s true anymore. I think something really bad happened to him. I think she… I think Maxie might have killed him.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” he told her. “He is a traitor to the Order.”

  “Just like that?” she looked at him in amazement. “And do you think Mark Andrew is a traitor to the order?”

  “Ritter von Hetz said he is not,” Dambretti shrugged slightly. “It is not for me to decide.”

  “But he is your friend! How can you just sit there and say it’s not for you to decide?”

  “I can see that he is in love with you, signorina, and I can see why.” He smiled and held his battered hands out to the warmth of the lantern and she saw that he wore a similar gold ring with a red and white inlaid cross patee. Married to the order. “That, in and of itself, is a betrayal of his vows. The company of women is a dangerous thing. And so it has always been, but without women, none of us would be here. Some of us have to forego the natural pursuits of life to ensure that life goes on as it should. Some of us have to devote ourselves to doing God’s work on earth. Such things are not undertaken lightly and there is much persecution and suffering. A Knight cannot afford to create hostages to fortune. He must be free of the burdens of hearth and home.”

  “Persecution and suffering. Like being pursued halfway around the world by one’s so-called Brothers?” she asked sarcastically. “Love is not a burden, Lucio. You should know that.”

  “It is a burden and worse,” he countered. “We have been endowed with the Mysteries of the Temple. This is a lifetime commitment and Sir Ramsay knew it when he took the vows and took up his position among the Twelve that it was until death do we part. A marriage of sorts. He is a married man.”

  “But your rules and your regulations are so out-dated. Don’t you ever change anything?” she asked him. “Don’t you ever get lonely, Sir Dambretti?”

  “It is like I told your Valentino that is what confession is for. There are sins and there are sins. Some sins are just sins that can be easily forgiven. Other sins carry heavier penalties. To betray the Order is what you would call a capitol crime. To have a companion to warm one’s bed at night is a minor thing. To desert the Order for such a companion is a capitol crime.”

  “And what exactly is considered betraying the order?” she asked.

  “Divulging the Mysteries to the uninitiated. Leaving the folds of the Order with the intent to desert. Retreating on the field of battle without proper authority. Murdering without cause. Killing an innocent Christian. These can bring execution. There are other serious charges. Rape, mutilation of the dead, killing women and children unnecessarily to name the worst. These can bring ex-communication. A serious offense, a serious penalty,” he told her. “That is about all. Very simple, no?”

  “Simple?” She shook her head slowly. “Then it is all right to murder as long as there is a good cause and it is all right to kill as long as it is not a Christian you kill? That doesn’t sound so simple to me. Are you saying that it is OK to kill innocent people who are not Christians?”

  “All Infidels are enemies of Christ and subject to death,” he explained. “If they want to go to hell, it is none of my concern, but if they want to stand in my way, then I will kill them. If they would prevent a Christian from worshipping the true God, then I will kill them. A Knight of Christ kills safely and dies more safely so says our patron Saint Bernard. We are Christ’s legal executioners appointed by God. It is our duty to keep the Holy Lands safe for the pilgrims. To protect the innocent. To heal the sick. To teach the Gospel of John. To preserve the Light and the Way. And to keep the secrets of the Holy Grail, the Ark of the Covenant, the true relics of the Saints, etceteras, etceteras. Do you not know that thousands of Christians still travel to the Holy City of Jerusalem every year? Who do you think protects them from the Infidels?”

  “You?” She frowned. “There are only twelve of you. How can you protect thousands of tourists?”

  “There are eleven Knights of the Council and one Grand Master. There are many Templars.” Lucio smiled at her. “You know very little about us.
There are sergeants and servants, apprentices and teachers, soldiers and sailors, accountants and lawyers, scribes and priests. We cannot go about wearing red crosses and hauberks, signorina. We are, after all, a secret order. We serve God. We do not need fame or recognition for what we do. I am not saying that Christ or Our Father would condone murder or killing for that matter, but if we do not protect ourselves and others from the powers of darkness, then there will be no Light left in the world. Already, the Light grows dimmer. What the Infidels have not done to us, the Heretics have accomplished with great enthusiasm.”

  “Heretics. You mean like witches and Satanists?” She narrowed her eyes. This was all news to her. She had never paid much attention to Valentino’s lengthy discussions with the others about the Templars.

  “There are no such things as Satan and witches with pointy, wart-covered noses, signorina.” Dambretti laughed at her. “And witches have more in common with God than the Church in Rome.” He leaned toward her over the lantern and his face glowed from an inner light. “I have known some very, very beautiful witches, la mia dolce. In fact, I might have thought you one when I first saw you on the stairs.”

  “Me?! I am not a witch. But all that sounds heretical to me.” She looked at him in amazement.

  “And so it would seem you agree with the Church. Such is the lie. The Great Rome. The Great Babylon! Ha!” he snorted derisively. “The Church is ruled by men, not God. They would see us all dead and it is over our skulls that they would place pointy hats. They are simply a necessary evil at this point.”

  “But you are immortal Knights of the Temple of Solomon. Wasn’t he a Christian… I mean a Jew… I mean… I don’t know what I mean.” Her eyes widened at this revelation.

  “I am a poor Knight of Solomon’s Temple and yes he was an Israelite, but he was also a great magi,” he explained and fires danced in his dark eyes. “As are all the Knights and the Grand Master. We hold the secrets of the Mysteries and we would be called Magi. It is a dubious honor and rare, but it has its pitfalls. Immortality is not all that you might imagine. Life becomes tiresome. Especially for some of us. Your Sir Ramsay, for example. It is no wonder that he has fallen so hard for you. He has the greatest burden of all. Imagine going about killing your family as the need arises. Do you think it is easy for him? He kills a Brother here and a Brother there. Occasionally an apprentice or some other fallen Templar and then goes back to his dreary castle in Scotland to make gold for the Order. That is where you can find him when he is not moping around the Villa in Italy at the Master's behest. Year after year it is the same for him. You have never heard him talk, signorina. You don’t know him.” He stressed this last sentence and she shuddered.