The Red Cross of Gold I:. The Knight of Death (35 page)

He finished combing his hair and wrapped
himself in a towel before emerging from the bathroom. She met him
at the door with a steaming cup of coffee, lots of cream and sugar.
It was beginning to be habit and one that he was beginning to
appreciate and look forward to: finding himself alone, naked or
half-naked with the Pixie. It was like one continuous, unholy, but
pleasant orgy. He would never forgive himself. God would never
forgive him.

“Will you…” he began to protest, but she
shoved the cup in his hands and pulled him toward the bed where she
coaxed him back under the covers. She plumped up the pillows behind
him and then she climbed onto the bed facing him with a plate of
semi-cold hotcakes, eggs and bacon.

“What would you like first? Toast or
hotcakes? Though they aren’t very hot anymore.” She smiled at him.
“Breakfast in bed. I’ll bet you’ve never had it so good, Sir
Ramsay.”

“Merry.” He shook his head and took hold of
her hand. How could he tell her what he was thinking? She looked so
innocent and was obviously happy. She used her free hand to deliver
up a forkful of eggs and popped them in his mouth. “Merry,” he said
again and lost part of the eggs on his chest. She picked them off
gingerly with the fork giggling, brushing at the hair on his chest
playfully.

"You should let me wax that," she said and
laughed again.

"Egad!" he said, almost choking at the idea.
"I have known almost every pain known to man and some possibly
invented especially for me, lassie, but I think I will pass on that
one."

He never remembered trying to talk and eat at
the same time. Another broken vow.

“Merry,” he tried once more and caught both
her wrists before she could fill his mouth with something else. For
once his appetite was not foremost in his thoughts.

“Yes, what’s the matter?” She frowned.
“You’re not hungry, Mr. Ramsay?”

“Please, if you don’t start calling me Mark,
I’m never going to talk to you again,” he raised both eyebrows, but
held on to her hands.

“Only if you let go of me and let me feed
you.” She mocked his look and he dropped her hands.

It was useless. She buttered the hotcakes and
poured honey over them.

“Here you go… Mark.”

She cut off a big bite and fed it to him. He
let her go on with it even though he would have rather talked to
her for a change. He had things to tell her. Things he had to make
her understand. But how could she ever understand it? She was
babbling about how much better honey was than syrup. Soon she was
talking about bees and pollution.

He chewed quickly and tried to talk, but just
couldn’t manage it. He couldn’t imagine how people could talk with
their mouths full of food or even between bites.

When the majority of the breakfast was gone,
she removed the dishes from the bed and came back with fresh coffee
from the carafe on the dresser. Climbing onto the bed beside him,
she laid her head on his shoulder. He hardly knew what to say any
more. He had even lost his resolve to tell her what he was
thinking. His initial shock at his returning memories was fading
somewhat. He was again consumed with guilt about his relationship
with her as the close proximity of her body made things start
happening under the cover. He sipped the hot coffee in silence for
a while just listening to her talk.

“Merry,” he made one last attempt, changing
his tone this time. “Would you leave this place with me?” He wanted
to know the answer to the question, even though he knew there was
nowhere for them to go.

He felt her stiffen and then she began to run
her finger around in circles in the dark hair on his chest.

“This is my home,” she said finally. “Why
would I leave here?”

“We could go… somewhere,” he suggested. “To
Scotland, perhaps. You would like it there. It’s much more…
civilized than this place. A little cold at times like you said,
but it has its good points and no polar bears.”

“Cecile said you had promised to stay.”

She looked up at him pleadingly and he knew
that Valentino had been right. She would never leave her home with
him.

“She said that you were on vacation and that
you would stay a while longer with us.”

“I’m not on vacation and you know it,” he
told her resignedly. “They are coming for me. In fact, I have
reason to believe that they are already here. I have to leave here
and I have to leave soon. This is much more dangerous than your
ugly Maxie. I want you to go with me.”

“Is that a proposal?” she asked him
quietly.

“I don’t know,” he answered truthfully. What
he was asking seemed somehow wrong in all aspects. There was no
hope in it. But something made him go on. “If you like, I suppose
it is… of a sort. I know you are not safe here anymore and I feel
responsible.”

“That’s what I thought. You might as well
adopt me then,” she nodded her head against him. “You can’t stay
and I can’t go with you. That’s a real sorry story, isn’t it?”

“You can leave,” he told her more
insistently. It suddenly seemed imperative that she leave with him.
“Why couldn’t you leave? Valentino doesn’t own you.”

“In a way she does,” Merry told him. “She
saved my life. I owe everything to her. But this is my home. This
is mine.” She waved one arm lazily in the air. “All of this. I
inherited it from my mother's. My grandparents. I never knew any of
them, but it is all I have.”

“Just because someone saves your life doesn’t
mean that they own you,” he objected and then frowned. He had saved
Dambretti’s life and he felt that he owned him somehow. Somehow.
“And land is just land. I could take you to some very wonderful
places. You could always come back… if you liked.”

“I’m selfish I suppose. I want the best of
both worlds.”

He thought over her words. She was no longer
talking about lands and houses.

“Does that mean you want me and Valentino…
both of us?” This was not what he had expected at all.

“Yeah, I suppose,” she said and her tone
changed. “I guess that’s what I mean. She represents stability. She
is all I’ve ever known as far as love.”

“That’s not right,” he felt his anger rising.
That was what Valentino had told him and now he was hearing it from
her. “She doesn’t love you. She can’t love you like a man can love
you. Like a man loves a woman, I mean. When a man and a woman are
in love, it’s… well… It simply is not possible.”

“Are you saying that you love me?” she asked
and raised her head to look at him.

“And what if I said yes?” He looked in her
eyes, frowning fiercely. He wanted to rip Valentino from her mind
and he felt that he could do it if he could just remember the
proper technique.

“I would say that you are deceiving
yourself,” she shook her head and smiled sadly at him. “I would
like for you to stay here for a long time, I think. But if I left
with you, I think you would get tired of me and leave me
somewhere.”

“That’s very unfair.” He was truly hurt by
her assumption.

“We both know what you are, Sir Mark,” she
took on a tone that he’d not heard from her before. A mature tone
and he felt that the real Meredith was speaking to him now and the
not the babbling girl. “It is not something you can change. If
Valentino is right, then you are not free to make the choice. You
will have to go back to them. You know this is true.” She picked up
his right hand and held out his little finger in front of his face.
The small silver ring glinted on his finger. “A man doesn’t wear a
ring like this for no reason.”

He looked at the ring with the IAAT engraved
on it. He still did not remember what it meant to him. Earth, air,
fire, water? That was what the letters stood for, but he didn’t
quite remember what it meant.

“That is something you cannot deny.” She
mistook his silence for understanding. “Oh, I like to play dumb,
Mark Andrew. It's easier to face life that way. Drifting inside a
bubble. Being irresponsible." She smiled and he saw real sadness in
her eyes for the first time. "You are very important to them. You
are the Alchemist. You know the secret of the Philosopher’s Stone.
You know the secret of the Great Work. You can change base metal to
gold. You know the secrets of the universe. What about that? It’s
not something just anyone can do. Do you think they would let you
get away from them? That alone would be enough to make them track
you down forever. But you are also the Chevalier du Morte. Do you
really think they would let you just go away? They have to have
you. Cecile told me that you are the only one that can release them
from this life. Think of it. They can’t die without you. I’ve heard
of people not being able to live without someone, but that is
really a strange twist.”

He looked at her in amazement. This was the
clearest picture he had heard concerning his identity, since he had
found himself in this strange place with a ragged memory. This time
it didn’t sound like a fairy tale. It sounded perfectly reasonable
and moreso because he knew it was true. The horrible visions and
dreams that had been plaguing him were not visions and dreams, but
memories. The only problem was that he did not remember the secrets
he was supposed to possess. They were still locked away somewhere
in his brain and he couldn’t reach them. And for once he was
eternally grateful that he had been unable to remember them. If he
had, then he might have truly betrayed the Order under Valentino’s
hypnotic spells.

If Valentino had lived five hundred years
ago, she would have been burned at the stake and she would have
deserved it much more than the Templars who had died at the hands
of the Inquisitors. The Order had been disbanded and the Templars
had scattered, but he and his remaining Brothers had escaped the
massacre intact and set up again in secret. They had hidden
themselves away, breaking off entirely from the Templars who had
escaped to Scotland and eventually let the outer circles of the
Order of the Knights of Christ practically and literally die around
them while the inner circle lived on under the new Order of the Red
Cross of Gold with a new Grand Master.

It was an almost unbearable guilt that they
all shared at having deserted the original Brothers, but their
responsibilities to God and to the world had been greater than
their own feelings of loyalty and so they bore what they had to
bear and did what they had to do. Not even the Grand Master of the
Holy Order of the Temple of Solomon had known of the innermost
circle alive and functioning within his Order and while the world
came and went around them, covering them over with layers of dust,
silt and blood, they held to their original purpose, their original
onus and gradually they had built a new, hidden empire beneath the
currents of mainstream civilization. It was one of the main reasons
that Anthony had to be found and brought in line. Merry was right.
He had to go back. One way or another, he had to go back, but he
did not intend to go back in a box. He shuddered at the vague
memories of having had the dubious honor of opening several bound
boxes over the years, delivered to him by various members of the
Order. Fallen Brothers needing his services. He closed his eyes
against that memory

“You know it’s true,” Merry said again. “But
you might as well enjoy yourself while you can. While it lasts. You
can’t make it any worse than it already is and once you are
reunited with your Brothers, you can ask forgiveness or confess or
whatever it is you do. I’m sure no one is keeping count
hereabouts.”

“But you are wrong. Nature keeps count of all
things. I am a Knight of the Temple and there are repercussions,”
he said aloud and the words sounded strangely familiar in his ears.
“I am Christ’s legal executioner. The words of Saint Bernard, not
mine.” He smiled and then added “Not the dog.”

She laughed, but it wasn’t funny.

“Now I know why the company of women is
dangerous,” he told her as his smile faded. “And for this reason
none of us must presume to kiss wife…” he kissed her. “Mother…” he
kissed her again. “Maid…” she kissed him. “Sister…” she kissed him
again. He did not make it through the entire list of persons he was
forbidden to kiss before he was breaking his vow again in the most
sinful manner he could think of with much more than kisses. He
would have to figure it all out later. It was not going to be easy
to give her up and he wondered if it would be possible at all.

((((((((((((()))))))))))))

Seven men sat around Miss Penelope Martin’s
long dining room table amidst the Victorian charm of pastel wall
coverings, gaudily framed Degas prints, fresh flowers, art deco
pewter statuettes, satin draperies and tableware made of fragile,
antiue gold and white China. A porcelain mantel clock of Rococo
design ticked off the minutes above a white marble fireplace. They
glanced at each other occasionally, but there was hardly a hint of
the convivial conversation usually accompanying meals at the bed
and breakfast and they were the earliest diners she had ever
served. Her other guests on the second floor were not due down for
breakfast before eleven, their hostess had told them when Beaujold
had asked. The Belgian waffles had been as good as Miss Martin had
promised. They were now devouring a plate full of fat cinnamon
rolls filled with plump raisins and drenched with creamy, orange
flavored icing. Miss Martin was pleased to see that their appetites
were normal even if their demeanors left something to be desired.
The silence unnerved the normally congenial hostess.

Christopher sat dejectedly at the far end of
the table. Traces of the black grease paint were still visible in
the tiny creases below his bloodshot eyes and around his eyelashes,
giving him a rather Gothic appearance. The pain still coursing
through his back, compliments of the Knight of the Sword’s well
placed emphasis caused him to grimace every time he moved. The
three newcomers had talked a bit at first, but the complete silence
of their dining companions seemed to unsettle them as well. When
the meal was finally over, Dambretti poured himself a glass of milk
and looked at Beaujold pointedly. The two visiting Frenchman
noticed the animosity between them immediately. One of them cleared
his throat and Dambretti sat back, resuming his dark contemplation
of the pattern on the tablecloth.