The Rose Demon
room burn!’
Raymond stared aghast at the priest. ‘This is murder!’ he rasped. ‘I am a knight of Christ, not an assassin!’
‘Open her mouth!’ Eutyches shouted.
Both knights backed away. The young woman was moving, her eyes fluttering. Eutyches put the pyx down and drew a bejewelled dagger from his robes. Sir Raymond stepped forward: those lovely eyes were open, smiling up at him. The Hospitaller lashed out, intending to block the thrust of the raised dagger. Instead, he struck Eutyches a powerful blow on the side of the shoulder. The old priest staggered and fell; his head hit the marble floor, cracking open like an egg. The blood seeped out. Sir Raymond stared in horror but turned at the warm, soft touch to his cheek. The young woman’s eyes were so lovely, so entreating her hands stretching out . . .
2
Masada, above the Dead Sea, July 1461
In the beginning:
The Rosifer, Lucifer’s great henchman,
Took a rose from the gardens of heaven
And rode down to Paradise to pay court to Eve.
Sir Otto Grandison was much changed. No longer the fiery young knight, he was clothed in a cloak of camelhair with rough sandals on his feet. Yet the greatest change, at least to the eye, was his face: no longer smooth and olive-skinned but deeply furrowed, burnt by a fiery sun, whilst his hair had turned grey, and an unkempt beard fell in a tangled mess to his stomach.
Sir Otto Grandison, now a hermit, stood on the cliffs of Masada. Narrowing his eyes, he stared out over the shimmering mass of the Dead Sea. It was just after dawn. The sun had sprung up like a fiery ball and already Grandison could feel the blast of heat from the desert below. He shaded his eyes and stared down the precipitous cliffs. He had slept badly, his mind racked by nightmares, the fears and terrors of the night. He looked back over his shoulder at the small cave built into the rock. A hermit’s dwelling: nothing but rough sacking for a bed; a battered pair of saddlebags hung on a peg; and a stone jar, the gift of a kindly Arab, to hold the water he drew from the well.
Grandison looked up. Vultures hung black against the sky, hovering, keen-eyed for any prey or for those about to die. Sir Otto crossed himself. Usually the vultures would preen their great feathered wings and fly out over the desert but, recently, they had begun to stay, hovering above him. He wondered whether they, too, sensed that death was near.
He stared round the ruins built on the top of these cliffs. A traveller, a seller of perfumes from whom Sir Otto had begged scraps of food in the valley below, had told him about these ruins. How Masada had once been a great fortress built by Herod the Great, he who had slaughtered the innocents at the time of Jesus’ birth. Later it had become a stronghold for the Jews in their violent struggle against the Roman legions, and its last defenders, determined not to be taken prisoner, had poisoned themselves, their wives and their children. Otto often wondered if their ghosts haunted this eagle’s eyrie or if Herod the Great, bound by chains in his own fiery hell, walked the ruins of his former greatness.
During the day, all was well. Sir Otto would stay in his cave, sleep, pray or pore over the battered copy of the Scriptures he had bought before leaving Rhodes. Sometimes, if he saw a camel train or merchants on the road below, he’d go down to beg for coins or food, assuring his would-be benefactors of his prayers to God Almighty. He was always treated gently by Christian, Turk or Jew. Some saw him as a holy man, a hermit; others a madcap fool to live in the heart of the wilderness and haunt the ghostly ruins of Masada.
Sir Otto, feeling the heat of the sun, walked back to the coolness of his cave. He knelt down and stared at the makeshift wooden cross placed on a ledge beside his bed.
‘I cannot blame them, Lord,’ he murmured. ‘I am what I appear to be: a sinner, a lost soul.’
Otto combed his iron-grey, straggling beard. His brother would not recognise him now. He drank a little of his precious water and lay down on his bed.
‘God bless you, Raymond,’ he whispered. ‘Wherever you are.’
He knew they’d never meet again, yet, sometimes, whether it was a temptation from the devil or not, he just wished he could clasp his brother one more time, especially now, before he died. Otto, deep in his heart, realised the Demon had found him. Turning on his side, he stared at the tangle of wild roses,
Weitere Kostenlose Bücher