©
Matthew Burden, 2001
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~23~
Jonathan swore and kicked
his horse, charging through the mist that hung over the road. The other two followed, pounding their way
beside him as they raced south.
“Templars!” he spat into the wind.
Alfred came up beside him,
leaning over as they rode. “It’s better
to forget it now and go back to Northampton,
Jonathan!”
The one-eyed brigand
remained silent.
“If the Templars have
possession of the robe,” the leader continued, “then we have no more chance to
take it.”
Jonathan looked at him
coldly, still charging down the road.
“I’m riding on!” he shouted in Alfred’s face. “You may do what you like!”
The leader fell silent, the
drumming of hoofbeats shattering the still air.
“Hold up for a moment, Jonathan,” he shouted across to the other man.
The brigand
reined in his horse and sat waiting for his leader’s instruction.
“Are you going to continue
trailing them?” Alfred asked.
He nodded.
“And you?” he asked the
other brigand, who also nodded.
“All right,” Alfred
continued. “I will ride around them when
they retire for the night, and make for Northampton. If I can muster our men in time, we should be
able to trap them between us on the road.
Surely we have enough men to overcome six Templars and two knights,” he
reasoned.
Jonathan nodded, pulling on
his beard. “Twenty men,” he said
dryly. “And we will lose at least half.”
“You were the one who seemed
so set on going after this robe. Are you
backing down now that they have help?”
Jonathan smirked. “It’s still worth it."
Alfred narrowed his eyes and
nodded. “Very well, then,” he
sighed. “I will ride on. Farewell, friends; hopefully we will see each
other again.”
~ ~ ~
The Count held up his hand.
“Listen,” he hissed.
Edward cocked his head to
hear the sound that the Templar’s ears had picked up. Suddenly, he felt the steady pounding in the
earth, like the war-drums of an army beating a frenzied retreat. In an instant, a rider flashed by, his brown
cloak streaming out behind him.
His jaw was set, his brown beard and dark, hard eyes unmistakable
to the companions.
“Alfred?” Edward breathed,
watching as his brother disappeared into the gloom. Just as it seemed he was about to vanish once
more along the trail, he heard a shout and a splash, then silence. No sound of receding hoofbeats, only dead
silence. Malcolm nodded to Oswald, who
drew his sword and dismounted, walking carefully forward through the fog.
It was only a few moments
before he came jogging back, his sword re-sheathed. “It looks like his horse slipped,” he
explained. “He must have fallen and
knocked himself out. He’s still over
there.”
Edward leaped from his horse and dashed off into the mist.
“Wait, Edward!” Hannah
cried, prodding her horse after him.
They stopped at the edge of a steep declivity sloping away from the
roadway. In the mire at the bottom of
the narrow ditch, Alfred lay unmoving, the fallen horse still thrashing about,
trying to loose itself. Using his knee
to slide down the muddy embankment, Edward clambered past the horse to where his
brother had fallen.
His beard and clothes were
splashed with mud, his face bruised and bloodied from the fall. “Alfred,” Edward gasped, kneeling down beside
his brother’s still form. “Can you hear
me?”
For one long, agonizing
moment, the brigand did not reply.
Finally he gasped out, “I hear you, Ed.”
“Can you rise?”
The brigand drew a long,
ragged breath and heaved his body up, cradling his sword arm gently.
“Edward,” he mouthed, but no
sound came out. The huge man’s eyes
fluttered, then closed, and he began to fall back into the mire again. Grasping Alfred’s shoulders with all the
strength he could muster, Edward hauled him halfway up the bank before dropping
from sheer exhaustion. Calling out, he
had to use Malcolm’s help to drag the unconscious brigand up from the ditch.
Edward
sighed and sat down on the roadside, carefully examining his brother’s
wounds. Malcolm shot him a meaningful
glance.
“You knew he would be
following us, didn’t you?”
“As did you,” the other replied. “You think I did not notice your careful
rearguard all the way from Newcastle?”
“How many men does he have?”
Edward shrugged. “When we chased them away there were only two
with him, right?”
Malcolm nodded.
“But he told me he had
more,” Edward continued. “At Northampton…I remember
him mentioning that he had another score of men awaiting him.”
“Northampton?
That’s not far from here, Edward.
Do you suppose he was going to rally his men against us?”
“Could be. If he had been following us,
no doubt he saw the Templars join us.”
“And that was when he
decided he needed more help,” Malcolm concluded, nodding grimly. “And so there are several groups now that
desire the robe we bear,” he whispered, glancing over his shoulder to where the
Templars were still huddled together, conversing in low tones.
“But none of them know for
certain that we have it,” Edward said, raising himself to his feet with a
grunt. “And we must remember that
Hannah’s uncle is still in danger. He is
the only family she has left, except for her baby brother. We must be careful, and do this for her
sake. Surely there must be some man of
high values who would be a worthy protector of the relic.”
“Perhaps,” Malcolm
allowed. “But finding him is the more
difficult matter.”
Edward nodded and raised his
arms out above his head to stretch his weary muscles. Gazing down at his brother’s unmoving form,
his thoughts were snatched away in an instant to that most terrible of times
nearly ten years before.
~ ~ ~
The shouts of the madmen
echoed down the corridors; the screams of the servants could be heard lingering
in the cold night air. Edward, a
boy of fifteen years, was huddled in a corner with Helen, a serving-girl
only several years older. They clung to
each other, shuddering each time one of the screams echoed
throughout the hallways. Fear seemed to
consume him in a chilling wave. He was only glad that he was not alone; Helen
was with him.
“God help us,” she
whispered, a tear flowing down the soft curve of her cheek.
Edward turned his head to
look at her, wondering what they could do.
He cursed himself inwardly at his weakness, longing to have the
courage to rise up and face the brigands that were sacking his father’s
house. The thin fingers of his left hand
gripped a small club so hard that he began to lose feeling in them; his
right was holding tight to Helen’s. Each
time a shout or scream was heard, Edward could feel his muscles tense with involuntary
fear.
After several minutes,
though, it was Helen who finally made an attempt to leave the
hiding-place. The chamber had been quiet
for several minutes, and, although they could not see all of it, they assumed
it was once again empty. As she rose and
squared her shoulders, preparing to step out into the light, she gasped. She tried to hunch back
into her position next to Edward, but it was too late. She had been
seen. Out of nowhere a monstrous figure
appeared, his thick beard dripping with sweat.
With a brutal heave, the attacker ripped Helen out from the niche in the wall and slammed her
down against the floor. Edward’s pulse
pounded in his ears, his heart was racing wildly. He heard the awful sound of her impact, and
the whimpered scream that escaped as the ruffian began to beat her.
Noble Helen, beautiful
Helen. Edward watched as she
was tortured on the floor, her screams cutting deep into his heart with more
force than any brigand’s sword.
He pressed himself against the cold stone wall of the niche, praying
that God would give him the bravery to save her.
She had been his companion
since childhood, and Edward had secretly adored her. Although she was but a servant and he the son
of a Saxon noble, there was something deeper than friendship that had begun to
spring up between them.
Edward’s muscles tensed and
he closed his eyes tight, heaving out a quick breath. “Lord, have mercy,” he whispered hoarsely
before rocketing himself out of his spot, barreling his small frame in the
brigand’s side. His head snapped back
with the force of the impact, but he pressed on, pummeling the attacker’s side with all his might.
Surprised by the unexpected
flurry of blows that descended on him from nowhere, the large man was unable to
turn around quickly enough of deflect the brunt of Edward’s charge. Each time the youth struck, he let out a
wild, inhuman shout, raging like a beast against the massive wall of flesh
before him. He fought until his knuckles
were raw and bleeding, dodging back and forth around the brigand’s bulk, and
bruising his undefended side whenever he could land a blow. His eyes burned with the fury of utter
hatred, and at last all fear had been purged from his mind. There was nothing of himself left, no fear of
bodily harm. Nothing but Helen.
At last the brigand spewed
out a string of loud curses and drew a dagger from his belt, flailing wildly at
the dodging youth. Edward leapt aside
from a misplaced slash and immediately stepped back into the defenseless gap
while the brigand tried to control his swing.
Closing his eyes, he drove his boot up hard against the attacker’s
stomach.
The huge man stumbled back
and released the dagger, the wind knocked out of him. As his lungs heaved to regain his breath,
Edward leapt forward and landed on top of him, beating him with a
strength born of desperation, tearing at his beard until his face was bloody
and scratched. The brigand gave a shout
and heaved the youth away.
Edward landed hard on the cold stone floor. But as he rose to his knees
again, his hand touched the cool metal of the dagger that the attacker had
dropped. The huge man was roaring with
anger and marching across the room to finish off the two young victims. Just as he stooped down to grasp Edward’s
shoulder, the young man whirled and, with a shout, drove the dagger
toward the man’s face. It cut a long
gouge down from the brigand’s forehead, through his eye and into his cheek.
The burly ruffian let out a
shriek of pain. He brought his hands up
in a vain effort to stop the rush of blood that was streaming down his
face. With an enraged shout, he leveled
one final kick at the youth, then turned around and ran out of the room.
Edward slumped over,
breathless. The skin on his knuckles had
peeled away, leaving a painful, bloody patch of flesh. Hearing a low moan beside him, he turned to
see Helen, still stretched out on the stone floor of the little chamber. Her clothes had been torn and slashed, her
face and arms bruised horribly.
“Edward,” she said, her breath coming labored.
“Yes, I am here,” he
replied, placing his face over hers so that he could hear her words.
“Edward,” she said again, a
final sigh before the breath passed from her lungs. Her eyelids fluttered, then closed slowly,
her lips forming the easy smile of someone content with life. Content with life, but life had left her.
He looked at her for a long
time, unbelieving, studying her face. He
knew she was dead, and yet his mind would not accept it. He watched her eyes for some sign of an
awakening, of the breath returning to her empty body. The smile on her face was otherworldly, and
seemed completely out of place. There
she lay, bruised and beaten, ravaged and terrorized in her final moments, and
still she had found some deep inner well of strength to leave life with the
light of a smile.
Edward began to weep,
cradling her head against him, and whispering in her ear as they had done so
often in their childish games. He longed
for those days again, bright, happy days of peace and joy. And now there he was, holding his one true
friend in his arms, dead.
With a scream
half of pain and half of sorrow, he stood up, and, seeing the discarded dagger, snatched it up and dashed madly down the hall, searching for
the coward who had destroyed his life.
Following the flickering
light of a torch down the corridor, he turned the corner into his father’s
chamber. As he reached the doorway, he
stopped, perplexed, and gazed within.
Several of the brigands had gathered about his father’s bed, their long
daggers exposed. Another brigand, the
leader, stood looking on, his back to Edward.
He could hear his father’s
voice, small and afraid, pleading with the strange men, the fearsome demons of
violence that had descended on them.
Edward watched in speechless horror as the leader nodded his head, and
he saw the daggers flash down. He turned
his head so as not to see the death-blow given to his beloved father, so ill
and helpless. A silent scream racked his
throat, and he fell to the stone floor in shock, the dagger clattering to the
stone floor. The leader turned at the
sound, and Edward gazed up at the face he knew so well, the face he
revered, the face he admired, trusted, and looked up to.
“Alfred?” he gasped out. “Alfred, my brother…” his
voice was weak, with the sorrowful timbre of a man betrayed. “What is this?”
Alfred spoke, the same deep
voice that had laughed with him in childhood and instructed him in the ways of
being a man. “It is what had to be, Edward,”
he said, almost as if he were sad at the unavoidable purpose he faced. But his eyes, his eyes raged with a strange
gleam, a gleam not of regret but of lust—the lust of power.
Releasing a mighty shout of
pain, Edward turned
and sprinted back down the hallway and out into the cool night air. He ran past the bodies of dead servants and
did not turn aside for the whimpered pleas of the dying. Finding his horse in the stable, he saddled it and rode out into the starless night, his raw throat screaming at
the heavens. All he wanted was
to escape the nightmare and to return in the morning to find all as it should
be. Urging his steed north, he raced
like the wind, hoping to outpace the pain.
It was several days later
that he collapsed, sleepless and starving, on a cold expanse of a northern
shore unknown to him. And as he gazed
out at the black waters, wondering what it would feel like to drown, he saw
across the bay the twinkling lights that beckoned him to go on. He swam beyond the point where he could feel
his muscles giving out. He felt the deep currents tugging at him, claiming him as their own, but he denied
them, pressing his weary body ever further.
His limbs were numb, but
still he found the power to move them, gliding through the stiff waves toward the banks of a little island.
When he was at the point of giving in, his mind wavering on the brink of
unconsciousness, he felt a strong grip take him by both arms, whispering
encouragement in his ears before he lost all consciousness.
He awoke the next morning on the shore of the island, breakers foaming over him.
His clothing was tattered and torn, but he was still alive. He glanced around, but no sign of his
midnight rescuer could be seen. He
moaned, commanding his weary muscles to raise him to his feet.
Climbing up a steep path, he
fell at last at the gate of the monastery of Lindisfarne,
wishing nothing but death and yet forced to press on in a life that bore him no
hope. He did not know why God had not
let him drown, but it was as if a deep voice was beckoning him in a still,
quiet manner, tugging at his heart.
Though he knew that freedom from his pain would only come from death, his
heart bore him onward, to something it spoke to him of, something greater.
~ ~ ~
Edward shook his head,
clearing his mind of the awful thoughts that returned like a flood. Since his time at Lindisfarne,
he had found his purpose in life. It had
given him joy, yes, even solace from the memories of that night. He had found healing in the awesome power of
Christ, and, as he gazed at his brother, he felt at last that final grudge that
he had borne between them was wiped away.
What he had told his brother at Raymond’s house was finally true: he had
forgiven him, fully and completely.
The memories of the
terror-filled night had all been washed away, into some past life. They were no longer part of him, nor could
they dictate his course in life. He was
his own man, and he had determined not to let any earthly thing be his master:
not the past, not the future, not any man, not any force of evil.
Kneeling down to wipe the
mud from his brother’s face, he looked up at his friend. “He needs to know,
Malcolm.”
The Scot looked down with
sympathy. “What’s that,
Edward?”
“He needs to know how much I still love him. He needs to
know that we are still brothers.”