The Red Cross of Gold I:. The Knight of Death (49 page)

She lay flat on her stomach and dipped her
hands in the cold water, splashing some in her face and drinking
some of the sweet spring water.

Any idea of running away with Mark faded with
the brightening of day under the trees. The sun always chased away
dreams and put the light of harsh reality into every picture. He
would surely leave as soon as he could and she would never see him
again. Tears welled up in her eyes at the thought of losing him and
then she realized that he had never belonged to her. If he had any
real thoughts about her, he surely thought her a rotten individual,
capable of anything and certainly not worthy of love, a loose woman
without morals or decency. She knew a bit about history and how
severe the punishment had been for adulterous women, prostitutes
and common whores. His opinion of her would surely be low if it
registered on the scale at all. Tears of frustration and anger
joined the spring water on her face.

A splashing sound coming from upstream
interrupted her misery. She froze on with one hand shading her eyes
and waited for the source of the noise to come into view. The sound
was methodical and as it drew nearer, she recognized the hollow
clomping of hooves against rocks submerged in the water. No doubt,
Raven was walking down stream, nibbling at the sweet clumps of
grass growing along the bank. She scooted back off the rock and
took cover beside it under the leaves of a tall weed laden with
purple berries.

The black stallion wandered aimlessly into
view. The subdued light under the trees slanted through millions of
translucent green leaves and the trunks of the trees cast deep
shadows across the stream. Their gnarled roots formed fantastic
shapes along the banks, piling up against one another in a slow,
but inexorable struggle for space. A few yards upstream from where
she waited, a graceful weeping willow of considerable age added
mystery to the beauty of the backdrop against which the velvet
animal assumed the proportions of a mythical creature. She
half-expected to see wings on his back. The trailing tendrils of
the willow partially obscured the dark rider atop the black horse
like a living beaded curtain of light green.

He did not appear to be seated in the saddle,
but rather perched precariously on top of the stallion. The horse
moved out of the willow’s covering branches and she drew a sharp
breath. She had followed the right man. He sat with his knees up,
his head leaning into the horse’s neck. One pale hand was visible,
entangled in the long mane while the reins dragged in the water.
Was he dead in the saddle? Was that possible? The horse slowly made
its way toward her until a break in the trees allowed the slanting
rays of the morning sun to illuminate the area like a stage
provided by nature and just for a moment, she thought she saw
dozens of tiny green, yellow and blue orbs floating around him.
Then the illusion was gone as the lights seemed to flee in every
direction at the very instant she drew the breath. The horse took a
step or two and then stopped.

The rider jerked slightly and the horse took
another step or two and stopped again. Not dead. She watched in
silent fascination as this process was repeated again and again. He
wasn’t dead, nor was he quite asleep. It was unbelievable. He was
close enough now that she could see narrow stripes of darkly
glistening liquid running down the saddle and under the horse’s
belly. This was the source of the spots that she had been following
along the trail. She tried to remember how much blood was in the
human body. Certainly he could have none left.

She stood up very slowly. Valentino’s
stallion had always made her nervous and the feeling was mutual. He
was high-strung and given to bolting at the slightest provocation.
When he saw her, he stopped and took a tentative step backwards,
rolling his eyes in alarm. His rider jerked again and he regained
the step.

“Raven!” she called softly and the horse
snorted. The smell of Mark’s blood already had him spooked. She
clucked to the horse like Valentino always did. “Come on boy. Come
on, Raven.” She held out one hand, pretending to cup an apple in
it. He loved apples and was always ready to take a chance that
there might be one even when it was a ruse. The horse turned
abruptly toward her and she heard the rider moan softly at the
sudden movement.

She backed up the bank slowly, staying out of
reach of the horse’s muzzle, as he came nearer and nearer, tossing
his head and nickering softly. Mark made a strangled sound when the
horse climbed jerkily from the rocky stream bed to the softer
ground beneath the cottonwoods.

“Come on, boy,” she coaxed the horse to her.
“Good Boy!” she said as she grabbed the reins and the horse seemed
to calm down at once. She looked up at Mark Andrew, trying to judge
his condition.

When Raven stopped, he jerked again and tried
to make the horse go in the same manner as before, completely
unaware of his surroundings or her presence. His eyes were tightly
closed and his face was smeared with blood. There were ghastly
clots on his hands and in the horse’s mane. She could see the hilt
of the golden sword protruding from the left side of his lap. It
was incredible. No one would ever believe it. But now she had
another problem… How would she ever get him off the horse? And what
would she do after that?

“Mark!” she called his name, but he did not
stir. Instead, he jerked again to make the horse go. She held
tightly to the reins to stop the stallion’s movements. “Mark
Andrew!” she said more loudly. “It’s me, Merry!”

Nothing. He was on automatic pilot. She took
hold of the hilt of the sword, pulled gently and her heart gave a
lurch when she thought it might be stuck in him, might actually be
the cause of his injury. But it couldn’t be. He couldn’t have
gotten onto the horse with a sword stuck through him! Could he?
Before she could decide what to do next, he reached down suddenly
with his left hand and grabbed her wrist, simultaneously jerking
himself upright and slamming her bodily against the side of the
horse. Raven stumbled and tried to rear. Merry had to wrench
herself free of Mark’s grasp and jerk down on the reins forcefully
to keep the horse in place. She spoke rapidly to the horse, trying
to calm him before chancing a look at Mark.

He was sitting straight up on the saddle with
his face turned up to the heavens as if drinking in the sunlight.
The colored orbs had returned. They buzzed around his head so fast
they left blurs like comet tails as they crisscrossed each other’s
orbits. She forgot about everything else and let go of Raven’s
halter in order to step closer to the spectacular sight, but her
movement caused the lights to fly off in every direction again,
emitting tiny whines, whizzes and shrieks. Mark’s serene face
crumpled when the pain of the movement registered on his mind, he
let go a blood-curdling scream into the sky before toppling onto
her, sword and all.

Merry didn’t know what was worse. The scream
or the tumble into the dirt under his weight. She’d never heard
anything like it before in her life. When she tried to dislodge
herself from beneath him, she discovered that one of her silver
filigreed earrings was tangled in his hair. She worked the thing
loose from her ear and then gingerly pushed him over on his back.
He was completely unconscious and that was probably a good thing.
Another good thing was that the sword had fallen free and was lying
a few feet away, bloodstained, but the blood was dry. She
extricated herself carefully from beneath him and tied Raven next
to the bay before he wandered off.

The horses snorted and jerked against their
reins, sensing her fear and agitation. The last thing she needed
was to lose their only form of transportation. When she went back
for Mark, the sword glittered dangerously in the dappled sunlight
and she picked it up carefully. It was a fascinating work of art.
Smooth and cold with the appearance of molten gold without a single
scratch or blemish on its surface. The blade itself was fashioned
out of three distinct pieces woven together like braided flames.
Merry had seen a number of swords in her travels with Cecile and
Gavin. Gavin was particularly interested in medieval weapons and
they often traveled to festivals celebrating the renaissance
period. Gavin had even taken part in some of the mock tournaments,
duels and sword fights and was forever dragging them into the shops
and tents where such weapons were sold. But never had she seen such
a weapon as this, beautiful and deadly at the same time. The edges
were extremely thin and incredibly sharp, but there were no signs
that would indicate that it had ever been honed. The hilt was not
separate from the blade, but made of the same smooth metal with
inlaid white stone. A round disc made of the same metal adorned
each end of the guard and a third disc at the end of the tang was
inlaid with white stone bearing a red cross pattee embedded
seamlessly in the center. There were no telltale marks or seams of
any sort which might indicate that it had been made of separate
pieces put together. The red cross was made of something opaque,
not glass, not ceramic or plastic, but red, deep red like the
bloody stains on her hands. Merry was mesmerized by the feel and
sight of the magnificent weapon that seemed to vibrate in her
hands, but when she thought of how many people might have felt the
raw edge of the blade on their necks, she laid it quickly beside
the boulder and returned to the more urgent business at hand.

The hardest part of her task was next and she
was very glad that he was completely unconscious when she attempted
the feat. Twenty minutes or more passed while she dragged him inch
by inch up the sandy bank where she propped him against the side of
the weatherworn boulder. She tore off the gauzy inner lining of her
gown and wet it in the creek. Starting with his face and hands, she
attempted to clean away the dried and not so dry blood. The stuff
was everywhere, in and behind his right ear, clotted in his hair,
soaked through his shirt, front and back. Even his pants were stiff
and sticky. It was impossible to tell where it had all come from.
Several rinsings were necessary before she could even make a guess
as to the nature of his injuries. When she sat back on her heels
and surveyed him thoughtfully, the overwhelming sense of relief
that she had felt upon finding him faded only to be quickly
replaced by another worry almost as immense: How would she get him
from this stream bank to a place of safety?

Judging from the rips in his shirt, it
appeared that someone had stabbed him clear through… again!

She shuddered and glanced apprehensively at
the sword and the blood stains on the golden blade. Everything
Cecile’s silly Order of the Rose had ever done, everything they
stood for, seemed petty and inconsequential at that moment and the
reality of what they had done to Mark crashed in on her. Cecile had
delved into the unknown and it had come back to bite her. Not only
would Cecile pay for it, she was feeling the teeth as well. She was
acutely aware how wrong they had been to detain him, but that was
the difference between her and Cecile. Cecile had no discernible
conscience.

When she was satisfied that she had done
everything she could do to make him comfortable with what little
she had to work with, she took off her sweater and rolled it into a
makeshift pillow for his head. The sun was already chasing the
chill from the air under the trees as she sat down on the ground
beside him. He looked deathly pale, but his chest rose and fell
very faintly every two to three minutes. The silver earring tangled
in his hair sparkled in an errant sunbeam and she bent over it,
carefully trying to work it out of his hair without disturbing him.
In the end, she picked out a lock of hair near the tangle and
braided it together until she had incorporated the earring into a
braided lock like an ornament. He looked like a fallen Celtic
warrior, his long hair framing his face and the warrior's braid
decorated with an ornament from his love or a symbol of his status.
She removed the other one from her ear and wrapped the thin silver
hook around the braid near the first earring. There were distinct
red splotches on his cheeks and neck, growing larger as the blood
renewed itself. She wondered how she could hold onto her sanity.
Mark Ramsay went against everything she had ever known or believed
and even in this sorry state, he spoke to her of another time and
another place, reminding her of the illustrations on the historical
romance novels she kept in a box in the closet under the stairs. He
was her prince and she was his princess and they had always known
each other…. There had never been a time when she had not known
him… She bent again and placed a kiss on his forehead, smoothing
back the hair from his face.

A squirrel barked in the tree above her and
she jumped out of her skin before slapping herself quite hard on
the cheek.

“You stupid silly girl!” she spoke aloud to
herself. “What is wrong with you?! He’s in big trouble and you’re
daydreaming! Won’t you please grow up and give everybody a break?!”
With this angry self-admonishment, she began to cry hot tears of
desperation as hopeless anguish gripped her heart in an iron
glove.

“I’m not dreaming,” his voice was barely
audible. “I’m just resting. I’ll be ready to go in a few minutes.
Just a few minutes.”

She leaned toward him, wiping the tears away
from her face and then her shoulders drooped in disappointment. He
had not opened his eyes or moved. He was talking in his sleep. She
knew that he did not belong here with her, that he could never have
fit in with the ordinary people living around about Waco, Texas.
Wherever he had come from, he had to go back and if he did ask her
again, she would not hesitate to go with him.

In the meantime, the only thing she could do
was wait for him to recover and pray that it would truly only be a
few minutes like he said. Someone from the house would come for
them as soon as Cecile discovered her absence and put two and two
together. She moved the horses to a less visible place in the grove
and secured them to the trunk of one of the smaller cottonwoods.
They couldn't ride as far as town. Over 35 miles? That would never
work.