Stephen Lawhead - Celtic Crusades 03 - The Mystic Rose

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PART I

August 24, 1916: Edinburgh, Scotland

A young woman of my acquaintance saw a ghost. Ordinarily, I would not

have given such a melodramatic triviality even passing notice, save for

two pertinent facts. One: the ghost appeared in broad daylight at the same

country house where my wife and I had been staying that very weekend,

and two: the ghost was Pemberton.

What made this eerie curiosity more peculiar still was the fact that the

spectre materialized in the room we would have occupied if my wife had

not come down with a cold earlier that day, thus necessitating our

premature departure. We returned to the city so she might rest more

comfortably in her own bed that night. Otherwise, we would surely have

witnessed the apparition ourselves, and spared Miss Euphemia Gillespie, a

young lady of twenty, and the daughter of one of the other guests who was

staying that weekend, with whom my wife and I were reasonably well

acquainted.

Rumour had it that Miss Gillespie was woken from her nap by a strange

sound to find a tall, gaunt figure standing at the foot of her bed. Dressed in

with news of the loss of RMS Lusitania in the early afternoon of 7th May

1915, roughly the time when his ghost was seen by Miss Gillespie.

This ghostly manifestation might have made a greater stir if it had not

been so completely overshadowed by the sinking of the Lusitania. The

daily broadsheets were fall of venomous outrage at this latest atrocity: a

luxury liner torpedoed without warning by a German U-boat, taking

almost twelve hundred civilian souls to a watery grave; The Edinburgh

Evening Herald published a list of the missing drawn from the ship's

manifest. Among those who had embarked on the trip to Liverpool from

New York were a few score Americans; the rest were Europeans of

several nationalities. Pemberton's name was on the list. Thus, while the

rest of the world contemplated the fact that the war had taken a sinister

turn, I mourned the death of a very dear and close friend.

I pondered the meaning of the spectral portent and, no doubt, would have

given the matter its due consideration, but I was very soon distracted by

the precipitous and worrying decline in my wife's health. The chill which

she contracted that day in the country had grown steadily worse, and by

the time the doctor diagnosed influenza, it was too late. My dearest,

beloved helpmate and partner of forty-four years passed away two days

later.

Within the space of a week, I had lost the two most important people in

my life. I was bereft and broken. Where I might have expected to rely

upon one to help me through the death of the other, I had neither. Both

were gone, and I was left behind to struggle on as best I could. The

children were some comfort, it is true; but they had busy lives of their

pggy

to maintain civil relations with my younger colleagues. I endured the daily

agony for three months and then retired.

All through this time, I had been wondering over the future of the

Brotherhood. I daily expected the summons, but it never came. I suppose I

began to feel as if the death of our leader had dealt a killing blow to our

clandestine organization - in my sorry state of mind it would not have

surprised me greatly, I confess. However, the wheels of our Order may

grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly fine.

Owing to the unfortunate circumstances surrounding Pemberton's death,

we of the Inner Circle could not officially recognize our leader's demise

until certain protocols had been observed. I understand that now; I didn't

then.

Also, owing to the war, Evans - our esteemed Second Principal - adopted a

cautious and conservative policy. It would not have been the first time a

passenger listed as missing at sea later turned up alive and well. So, we

waited until there could be no doubt, and prepared to mourn the death of

our inestimable leader in our own way.

Meanwhile, I became a man of enforced leisure. With plenty of idle hours

on my hands, I filled my time with little tasks and such chores as I deemed

needful or pleasing, and kept an increasingly anxious eye out for the dally

post - waiting for the summons I knew must come at some point.

Spring passed into summer, and the days lengthened. News of the war in

Europe - the Great War, the newspapers were calling it - grew more and

more dismal by degrees. I forced myself to read the accounts, and was

sickened by them; the more so, I suppose, because my own life was

That was how I came to see it. That fateful weekend in the country had

been planned for some time - part of a confirmation celebration for the

young son of a mutual acquaintance - and Pemberton knew about it.

Indeed, I had been surprised that he was acquainted with the fiamily in

question, and we discussed it. If Caitlin had not become ill, we would have

been in that room to see him. Thus, he had appeared in the place he

reckoned I was to be found.

But why me? Why not Genotti, DeCardou, Zaccaria, or Kutch? Why not

Evans, our number two? What had he been trying to tell me?

The quesnon gnawed at me until I decided one day to go and interview

Miss Gillespie in the hope of finding an answer. I wrote to her and

established a place and time to meet: Kerwood's Tea House on Castle

Street, a quiet place where we could discuss the matter discreetly. My

guest turned out to be one of those modem emancipated young women for

whom conventions of dress and manner are dictated by personal taste and

not by tradition or propriety or, indeed, modesty. She appeared wearing

one of those shimmery sheaths with little rows of tassels up and down its

short, shapeless length, complete with spangled yellow hat and gloves.

Confident, educated, and indifferent to matters domestic, she proudly

disclosed that she was soon to take up training as a nurse in order to assist

in the war effort.

Despite her deliberately provocative ways, I soon discovered in Miss

Gillespie a competent, capable, level-headed young person, not at all

given to flights of fancy. She also had a fine sense of humour - as I

quickly learned, once the tea had come and we had settled into the

She looked at me over the rim of her cup. 'Daddy told me you knew the

gentleman in question.'

'I knew him quite well, and I can tell you that finding himself in a lady's

bedroom would certainly have given him cause for alarm.'

She smiled, her pleasant round face lighting the dullness of a rainy

Saturday afternoon. 'I really didn't mean to startle him. But waking up and

seeing him standing there at the foot of the bed, all tall and rumpled, and

dripping like a drainpipe - well, I'm afraid I shouted at him terribly.'

'You were frightened, I expect.'

'I was at first. But that passed in an instant for I could see he was

perplexed.'

'Perplexed?'

'Yes,' she said, nodding thoughtfully, 'that is the word. He didn't seem to

know what he was about. You know how it is - you'll be going on about

your business, absorbed in your thoughts, and then you look up .... where

am I?' She laughed. 'Happens to me all the time - don't tell me it's never

happened to you.'

'It has been known,' I confessed, enjoying the pleasure of her lively

company. 'I once found myself in the Royal Museum with no recollection

of how I'd got there.'

'Well, that's how he looked to me - like he didn't quite know where he was

or how he got there.'

'Did you know he was aboard the ship that was sunk by the German

torpedo?'

Why is that?

'He was already vanishing by then, you see. He didn't go all of a snap!'

She clicked her fingers. 'He began to fade away - like when a cloud passes

over the sun and the day goes dim.'

'I see. Well ...' I regarded the young woman. As much as I appreciated the

information, it carried me no closer to the solution of the mystery which so

exercised my mind.

A frown of concentration appeared on Miss Gillespie's face. 'There was

one more thing.'

'Yes?' I leaned forward, eager to pounce on the smallest scrap of

information.

'I had quite forgotten until just now,' she said slowly, as if trying to

remember precisely. 'Just before he faded away completely, he looked at

me and said - if I recall it correctly - something like: "The pain is

swallowed in peace, and grief in glory."'

The message was obscure. It made no sense to me, and of all the things he

might have wished to say, I could not think this had any importance

whatsoever. 'Forgive me, Miss Gillespie, but you're certain that is what he

said?'

She shook her head vehemently. 'No, Mister Murray, I'm not at all sure. It

was very faint and by then he had mostly vanished. Nevertheless, that's

what it sounded like to me.' She regarded me with a hopeful expression.

'Does it mean anything to you?'

'I fear not,' I sighed. 'But perhaps something will yet come of it.' We

finished our tea then, and made our farewells. 'I thank you, my dear, for

yg py

jiggled as they skipped and ran to the accompaniment of a barking terrier.

A young mother pushed her baby in a large black pram, stopping every

now and then to tuck up the blankets, all the while doting on the face of

her infant.

I strolled awhile along the fresh rain-washed gravel paths, taking the air

and watching the clouds as they broke apart and drifted eastward towards

the North Sea. After a time, I sat down on a bench and dozed only a

moment, it seemed to me - but I awoke to find the lowering sun had

disappeared and a wind was blowing stiff and chill out of the west where

darker, more ominous clouds had gathered.

They were, it seemed to me, clouds of war, shadows of the great evil

rushing eastward to feed and strengthen the darkness already rampant

there. The political quagmire of the European noble houses was

inexorably sucking one government and power after another deeper and

deeper into the ruinous morass. The fighting, which had now spread on

many fronts, grew continually sharper, more brutal and vicious by the day.

As yet there was no end in sight.

The splendour of the summer day was, I reflected, like our own lives upon

the earth: short-lived, and bounded by darkness on every side.

It was in this sombre mood that I turned my steps towards home. By the

time I reached the house, the weather had turned foul. I unlocked the front

door just as the first drops of rain spattered on to the pavement behind me.

I quickly stepped inside and, as I turned to close the door behind me, my

eye fell upon a small, buff-coloured envelope lying on the mat. I turned it

over and saw my name neatly lettered in black ink. My heart began

CHAPTER ONE

At the pronouncement of the Patriarch of Constantinople, the bride was

carried from the cathedral on a silver bed draped with cloth of gold. Alone

on that wide and glittering expanse, she looked frightened, cowed, and far

younger than her thirteen years. Before her went a hundred black-robed

monks chanting the Gloria, followed by the stiffly dignified metropolitan

in his high-crowned, ruby and ivory-beaded red satin hat; the imposing

prelate carried a large silver frame containing the Sacred Mandelion: the

cloth bearing the indelible image of Christ, one of Byzantium's most

highly valued treasures.

Veiled in delicate silver netting from the top of her golden wedding crown

to the tips of her white-stockinged toes, the young woman's slender form

shimmered in the light of ten thousand candles as she passed through the

standing congregation, borne aloft on the shoulders of eight black

Ethiopians in yellow tunics. The noble groom followed his new bride on a

white horse, leading a dove-grey mare; both animals were caparisoned in

scarlet edged with silver, and both wore white ostrich plumes attached to

their silver headpieces.

From her place in the gallery high above the floor, Caitriona, mute with

amazement, gazed upon the dazzling spectacle and knew she had never

flung open wide and the newly married couple depart on billows of pink

rose petals. The crowds which had been waiting outside the church since

dawn roared with delight to see the royal party as it began the parade

through the city to the Triconchos Palace where the official marriage

banquet would be held amidst the marble columns of the Hall of Pearl.

'Well, dear heart,' said Duncan to his daughter, 'what did you think of

that?'

'You were very brave to bring me here,' Caitriona replied. 'I have always

admired that in you, Papa.'

'Indulgent, perhaps. But why do you say brave?'

'Because,' she said, her lips curving with sardonic glee, 'now that I have

seen how a lowly niece of the emperor is feted on her wedding day, I shall

accept nothing less on mine.'

Duncan clucked his tongue, and said, 'If I thought there was even the

slightest chance you would deign to marry, I swear this cathedral would

witness a ceremony far more grand than that which just took place.'

'Bring on the king and golden bed,' snipped Cait. 'Let us get it done here

and now.'

'Is it too much for a father to hope the treasure of his life might find a little

happiness in wedlock?'

'And ensure the continuance of the noble line, yes.' She frowned

dangerously. 'Look at me, Papa, and tell me the truth: who in their right

mind would want to marry me?'

'Any number of men, dear heart, given half a chance.'

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PARTIAugust24,1916:Edinburgh,ScotlandAyoungwomanofmyacquaintancesawaghost.Ordinarily,Iwouldnothavegivensuchamelodramatictrivialityevenpassingnotice,savefortwopertinentfacts.One:theghostappearedinbroaddaylightatthesamecountryhousewheremywifeandIhadbeenstayingthatveryweekend,andtwo:theghostwasPemberto...

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Stephen Lawhead - Celtic Crusades 03 - The Mystic Rose

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