The Rose Demon

now decaying, where he had thrown them into a corner of the cave. Otto had found these about a week ago, after he had come back from the road below, placed on a stone outside the entrance to the cave. Wild roses! He didn’t know where they had come from or how they could survive for so long in the fiery heat, yet they were a token, a warning: the Rose Demon was, once again, about to enter his life.

    Otto rolled back and clasped his hands. He was ready for death. He had atoned for his terrible sin. He had spent seven years here: a life of atonement, for breaking his oath and, above all, loosing the Rose Demon into the world of man.

    Otto could never forget Eutyches lying on that marble floor, the blood seeping out of his hoary, cracked head. Raymond and he had taken the princess out of the sarcophagus; so beautiful, so delicate, her body exuding the most fragrant of perfumes. She had not said much but thanked them softly and asked for their protection, which they had solemnly pledged.

    Then the Turks broke into the Blachernae. He and Raymond, the princess between them, had fled along the gloomy gallery and up steep stairs which took them out on to a hillside just beyond the walls of Constantinople. They had hoped to reach their ship but a squadron of Sipahis, Turkish light horse, had cut off their escape. He and Raymond were threatened with a violent and bloody struggle. God knows why or how - perhaps in their souls they realised what they had failed to do - but Otto and his brother had allowed the Sipahis to seize the mysterious princess. In return, the Hospitallers had been permitted through.

    Bloody and bruised, Raymond and Otto had secured passage on a small boat. By dusk that day they were on board a Venetian galley and, like the rest of the refugees, could only stare helplessly at the shoreline, watching columns of smoke float up from the city. To the Venetians the fall of Constantinople was a disaster but, to the two brothers, it was a personal shame. They had broken their oath. Eutyches had been killed - and the princess? Otto could never forget the hateful look she threw at them as the Sipahis seized her.

    ‘We did not mean to hand her over,’ Raymond later told the Grand Master of the Knights Hospitallers when they reached the island of Rhodes. ‘The Sipahis took her. It was impossible to rescue her.’

    The Grand Master, however, had sat grey-faced, open-mouthed, staring at them. At last he shook himself and rose slowly to his feet.

    ‘You should have killed her,’ he whispered.

    ‘Why?’ Raymond had asked.

    The Grand Master sat in a window seat and put his head in his hands.

    ‘Why?’ Raymond followed him across the room. When the Grand Master looked up, his face was suffused with a terrible anger.

    ‘In his last letter to me,’ the Grand Master jabbed a finger at Raymond, ‘His Imperial Highness, the Emperor Constantine, asked me to name two Hospitallers, two of my most trustworthy men for a task which only a priest and a soldier could perform. I chose you. You took your oath and you broke it. Now, because of your perfidy, not only is a good and venerable priest killed but a terror, much worse than any Ottoman army, has been unleashed on the world!’

    Raymond had fallen on his knees before the Grand Master, head bowed, hands clasped. Otto had done likewise.

    ‘Father,’ Raymond confessed, ‘we have sinned before Heaven, before earth and before thee.’

    ‘Yes you have,’ the Grand Master retorted, turning his back on them. ‘And, in all justice, I must tell you about your sin. For years there has been a secret held by this Order. I shall not tell you the details.’ He shook his head. ‘There is a woman in England who knows the full story, a devilish tale of horrible evil. In the vaults of the Blachernae Palace at Constantinople a great demon, the Rosifer or Rosebearer, was held fast in a human body.’ He sighed noisily. ‘This Rosifer is both an incubus and a succubus, one of the principal demons of Hell. This Duke of Darkness can move from one body to another, be it male or female, and possess it to its fullness. Only the Sacrament and fire blessed by a priest can destroy its hold and send it back to Hell.’

    Otto had just knelt, open-mouthed, whilst his brother had put his face in his hands and began to sob quietly.

    ‘The Emperor’s letter called on our help,’ the Grand Master continued harshly. ‘According to him, years ago this Great Demon Rosifer,