The Red Cross of Gold I:. The Knight of Death (28 page)

“I thought you might want a snack or
something,” she announced. “Merry told me that she didn’t think you
had gotten enough to eat at supper. You should have said
something.”

“That would have been rude.”

He crossed the room and took a bright yellow
apple from the basket. He looked at it suspiciously before biting
into it.

“I just keep forgetting what an appetite you
have,” she commented while she watched in amazement as he devoured
the apple. “Have you always had such a high metabolism? I would be
as big as a house in no time.”

He just looked at her as he finished off the
apple. He dropped the core in a small wastebasket and eyed the
basket again.

“Oh yeah, I forgot.” She smiled indulgently
as he picked up a banana and peeled it with a bit more dignity. “No
talking. You know that is a strange habit and one that has its
roots in the old school of monastic thinking. Are you sure, you’re
not a monk or something?”

He shook his head. He wondered what had
motivated her to come to his room bearing gifts. He had no
intention of drinking the wine.

“Merry has taken a great interest in you, as
you well know,” she continued to ignore his vow of silence and had
a seat in the chair in front of the desk. “I still don’t understand
it. I can see no purpose in it. I have asked you not to encourage
her and now I have to insist that you actively discourage it.”

He ate the banana in two bites, grimacing
after each one. He did not care for them, but they went down easy
enough.

“I never encouraged her,” he objected as he
dropped the banana peel on top of the apple core and stood looking
down at her. “I told you that before. She is a grown woman with her
own mind. It’s not for either of us to tell her what to do. She
will make her own decisions as all men… people do.”

“I will not have her throw her life away for
you,” Valentino’s tone changed. “She doesn’t understand what she is
doing.”

“And you do? Exactly what is she doing?” He
leaned against the desk and folded his arms over his chest, eyeing
her now as if she were the next fruit on his list of things to
eat.

“She wants me to take you into our order,”
Valentino fought to retain control of her anger. “She wants you to
become one of us and she knows nothing about you.”

“She apparently knows something,” he smiled
at her. “She must see some good in me that you don’t.”

“She is blinded by her desire to have a
baby!” Valentino blurted. “The one thing that I cannot provide for
her. At least not by conventional means.”

“Aha!” He stood up straighter. “And you think
that she would use me for this purpose? That’s preposterous.”

“Is it?” Valentino raised one dark
eyebrow.

Mark thought for a moment what he would have
done to her if he had been in possession of his sword, but he
didn’t need his sword for this one. Her smug expression enraged him
and the red haze hovered around the edges of his vision. His
attempt to provoke her had backfired.

The very idea that the Pixie would do such a
thing was outrageous. Would a woman really use a man in such a way?
He had never given it any thought. He had never had a reason to
think of it. In fact, he had never given much thought to
relationships between men and women at all. Especially
relationships that produced children as by-products. Children were
far more dangerous than women. The thought disturbed him
greatly.

“Certainly you are living in the Dark Ages,
my friend.” Valentino laughed. “Lots of women have babies without
the entanglement of having Daddy around to complicate matters. It’s
just that Merry has it in her head to do it the natural way. She’s
one of those people who drinks all-natural orange juice and eats
breads made without preservatives and makes her own yogurt. So, you
see, you are just the instrument of her latest whim. A necessary
evil, so to speak. Her interest in you, personally, is a fleeting
thing. What worries me is the depth of its present state. I can’t
have her mooning over you for too long because you will be gone and
then she will have another psychosis to cling to… the abandoned
woman. She loves to act out. Role-playing every part for the best
effect. If you leave while she is still ‘in love’ with you, then
she will be able to throw it in my face for months, maybe years and
I just don’t want to put up with it.”

Mark was trying to reconcile what he was
thinking with what she was saying. He searched his memory for
something to draw on. The only thing that came to mind was the
story of Lot’s daughters. They had actually seduced their own
father just to have children, but they had thought that they were
the only people left in the world! Somehow that particular story
did not seem to apply here.

“Don’t take it so hard, pilgrim,” Valentino
told him lightly. “She would not make a good wife for you anyway.
She is too unsettled. Too… her tastes are too varied. You would
have a hard time keeping her home.”

Mark considered her words carefully. The
Pixie did not seem to be the motherly type, that was true enough,
but motherhood was instinctive in women, was it not? He still could
not grasp the idea that he was some immortal, ancient Knight of a
long dead order. It was just not possible.

“Perhaps,” he said after a moment “she is
looking for something else.”

“Like what, for instance?” she asked in her
most condescending manner.

“Love,” he said simply.

“Love?!” She laughed and he cringed inwardly,
immediately regretting what he had said. “No one… male or female…
could love her more than I do. I would give my life for her in an
instant.”

“Perhaps,” he shrugged. “But perchance there
is a love of which you have no concept. Perhaps you have no frame
of reference having never experienced the love between a man and
woman.”

“And are you telling me that you are in love
with Merry?” she asked incredulously. “I hardly think there is much
of a difference between such relationships and the one she and I
share. They may differ a bit physically, but the emotions are the
same. I can do anything you can do, except for that one little
detail.” She wiggled her forefinger suggestively.

Mark blinked at her in disbelief. He tried to
imagine her doing some of things he could do and shuddered.

“I disagree,” he told her. “Love between men
and women is ordained by God. What you are describing is an
abomination in the eyes of God. It is written that…”

“Don’t give me your holy roller bullshit,
Ramsay!” she snapped and her composure was gone. “That shit is dead
and stinky.”

Mark Andrew closed his eyes. What had he been
doing? Preaching to her? OK, so he was a murdering, raping, burning
and pillaging priest who carried a sword made of gold and fell in
love at the drop of a hat. That explained everything. A sort of
religious Viking berserker with a romantic streak. That was it.

“But back to the other question,” she calmed
down as quickly as she had exploded and leaned her chin in her
hand, propping her elbow on the back of the chair. “Are you in love
with Merry or not?”

“No!” he said quickly and then recanted.
“Yes… maybe. It doesn’t matter.”

“What?” She sat up and frowned. “What do you
mean it doesn’t matter?” She got out the chair and threw her hands
over her head. He watched in fascination as she danced a little jig
around the room repeating his words over and over. It doesn’t
matter. It doesn’t matter. She danced very close to him and leaned
down to look in his face before grabbing his ears and kissing him
forcefully on the lips. She might as well have tried to rip his
head off. He actually cowered back from her. No woman had ever
treated him this way. Never. “Doesn’t matter? That is just so
typical

“Exactly what does matter, Sir Ramsay?”

“So you still think I’m a Knight?” he asked.
“What happened to the mistaken identity story? Are you trying to
confuse me into an early grave?”

“An early grave? That’s a laugh,” she laughed
hysterically. “If you had died five hundred years ago, it still
wouldn’t have been an early grave and I am beginning to wish that
you had. Are you on such a higher plane than the rest of us that
even love is irrelevant to you? Are you so superior that the
greatest emotion of all is inapplicable to you? Or could it be that
you are such a dumb fucker, you don’t even know if you are in love
or not?”

“I didn’t say I didn’t know. I just said it
didn’t matter,” he looked at her in wonder, surprised by her
vulgarity and the depths of her insanity. “I don’t belong here. I
may stay a day or I may leave tomorrow. I may stay here the rest of
my life as your prisoner, but I will never belong here, so it does
not matter whether I love her or not.”

“I fail to see your reasoning,” she frowned
at him, her dark eyes still full of contempt. “Is that some kind of
guy thing?”

“She belongs here,” he said and shrugged. The
conversation was pointless. “I would take her away with me, if she
would go, but I don’t think she would. I have to assume that she
belongs here with you and therefore, it matters not one whit
whether I love her to distraction or think her an ugly old crone
unfit to wipe my boots.”

“There, you see?” She put her hands on her
hips in satisfaction. “She would have to leave her home. You would
go on with your life, whatever it is, and she would have to change
hers. She would end up sitting in some big, drafty house somewhere
in Scotland, and there’s a man’s country if there ever was one, and
you would have your assistant schedule a few hours for her on your
busy itinerary. Oh, Jeeves, pencil Meredith in for ten o’clock. I
should be back from hacking off Sir Pencildick’s head by then and
have my kilt pressed, won’t you? The green and yellow one, aye! I’m
in the mood to wear a skirt today,” she mimicked his voice and his
accent and Mark stared at her with his mouth hanging open. It was
almost laughable and caused him to smile in spite of her language
and the situation. Especially the part about the kilt, his colors
were red or blue, no yellow. “That’s what I’m talking about. That’s
just so typical. Go ahead, laugh! But you are basically right. It
doesn’t matter whether you love her or not. She’s not going
anywhere with you. And like I said to begin with, I want you to
discourage her infatuation for you. Do you understand that?”

“And so we are back where we started from,”
he said tiredly. His mind focused on the word ‘assistant’. He did
have an assistant. The face of a young, bright-eyed man with very
short dark hair smiled at him from the sands of a snow-white beach.
The sight of the same young man sans smile in handcuffs with a
chain wrapped around his waist and shackles on his ankles cropped
up next. Rapidly following these images, he saw the boy in a dark
alley, scuffling with a gang of ruffians. Who was this young
fellow? Why was he in chains? This was the same young man that had
taken him to MacDonald’s. Christopher. Christopher Stewart.
Yes.

Valentino stopped talking.

“I hit a nerve didn’t I?” she asked, seeming
quite pleased with herself.

“I’m tired,” he told her truthfully. “What do
you know of my assistant? Is he a hostage here as well?”

“Hostage?” She blinked at him. “Now there is
a new word. I rather like the sound of that better than kidnapping
victim. You don’t look like a victim. Hostage suits you
better.”

“You are bloody insane.” He shook his head.
“You didn’t answer my question.”

“I don’t know anything about your assistant.
I suppose he must help you in the forge, right?”

He was relieved to hear it and believed that
she was telling the truth.

“Enjoy your fruit basket, Mr. Ramsay,” she
said with finality and turned toward the door. “It’s getting late
and I have a busy day ahead of me tomorrow.”

She left him abruptly and he heard the key
turn in the lock. Still a prisoner, but not nearly so confused as
before. He went to inspect the remains of the fruit in the basket
without thinking. He picked out an orange and began to peel it
thoughtfully. Where was John Tellman? He wanted to be done with the
little weasel. Perhaps he would take the key from him and throw him
down the stairs… two or three times for good measure.

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

That she had been forced to take John Tellman
into her confidence was distasteful to say the least and she
despised the little shithead personally, but he was the perfect
accomplice. No family ties, insignificant in every way. He would
not be missed even by the members of the order, when, and if, Maxie
had to get rid of him.

Tellman lived on a small spread west of hers.
Inherited land. Inherited money. Nothing to do with his time, but
hang out and ruin someone else’s day. At least Maxie liked him or
more like, his money. They often sat on the verandah, drinking
beer, arguing over ball players’ statistics and barbecuing when
nothing else was going on. John was expendable and, for that
matter, so was Maxie. When she had what she wanted, she intended to
get rid of him as well. She already had a place picked out to
dispose of the body after she poisoned him. She would have Maxie
bury him and dig a hole for Ramsay. Wouldn’t Maxie be surprised to
learn that he had been tricked into digging his own grave? But she
was becoming too good at murder and she did not really want to be a
murder. Circumstances merely dictated that it had to be done for
the greater good. And who was to say that killing John Tellman
would not be for the better good of mankind? He might be another
Jack the Ripper for all she knew.

John Tellman, on the other hand, was
flattered beyond measure to have been selected to help her gain the
secrets of Isis and Osiris from the man upstairs even though Ramsay
scared him to death and excited his interest at the same time. He
would share in the gift. He become like the gods of ancient Egypt.
Though he didn’t know exactly what that meant. She had promised him
as much and she was the high priestess of the Order. She would
never lie to another Initiate. It was the greatest honor anyone had
ever bestowed on him. Furthermore, she had insinuated that Ramsay
might indeed be interested in spending a bit of time with him if
things worked out well. There was nothing that she would not do for
him if he cooperated with her, including arranging a few hours with
the Scot.