The Dove Read online

  The Red Cross of Gold XXVII:.

  “The Dove”

  Assassin Chronicles

  By

  Brendan Carroll

  Copyright 2012

  The Dove dedicated to everyone who ever questioned the roles of the angels in the second coming and/or Armageddon.

  The characters are fictional and any resemblance to real persons alive or dead is unintentional and coincidental.

  Brendan Carroll can be reached at: [email protected]

  Follow on Twitter: @BrendanCarroll7

  Follow at Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BrendanCarrollRCG

  Brendan Carroll blog at:

  http://brendancarroll.wordpress.com/

  If you enjoy reading the Assassin Chronicles, do not be discouraged, the series is not quite over yet. Three more to go after this one.

  If you enjoyed Brendan Carroll’s writing style, have you checked out his other works also available in eBook format and paperback?

  Hounds of Oblivion: A small town is plagued by a string of gruesome murders and mysterious abductions. When the evidence begins to point to a local murder/mystery writer, things get kind of weird. Fortunately, his long time friend and local constable thinks there is more to it than meets the eye. The unlikely pair must solve and the mystery surrounding the murders and abductions before the FBI catches up with them.

  Tempo Rubato ~ Stolen Time: A tribute written to Brendan Carroll’s favorite classical composer: Wolfgang Mozart action/adventure style with a touch of sci-fi and romance. Tempo Rubato is an epic story about a corrupt, clandestine corporation using Einstein’s accomplishments and modern technology to make money in a somewhat less than legal manner. Murder and mayhem ensue when a Mozart scholar and NYC homicide detective get in volved. Check it out on Amazon, available for Kindle and also in paperback.

  I wish to dedicate this work to my fans, without which all of my work would be completely irrelevant and useless. My thanks to all of you who have come this far with me. You are all Number 1 in my book (pardon the pun)

  And to Lori Ann, who has been with me all the way, offering encouragement and valuable input for the series.

  Cover image courtesy of Sue Guerth,The Dove, who is a wonderful friend and great fan of the Assassin Chronicles. Long life and happiness, my Friend!

  The Red Cross of Gold XXVII:. The Dove

  Published by Brendan Carroll

  Copyright 2012 Brendan Carroll

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Prologue

  “My Lady!” the old man cried as he almost fell on the stone wall.

  The lovely, dark-haired woman looked up from her work with the sheep and frowned at her smith.

  “What is’t, Jack?” she asked, her lilting brogue held no small measure of aggravation. If her new shepherd didn’t learn how to shear faster, they were never going to get the job done. They had been at it for half a day and he’d only managed to mangle six fleeces. It would take years for him to match the speed of old Dugger. Dugger had once shorn 306 sheep in the space of one day’s work.

  “Thair’s a mon in th’ bairn, my Lady!” Jack gasped. He looked as if he’d seen a seven-headed dragon.

  “Fur God’s, mon,” Morna Ismay Ramsay sighed and let go of the sheep’s forelegs and straightened up, pressing one hand against the small of her back. Aiden was killing her.

  The young shepherd stepped back and wiped his face on the back of his hand. The sheep scampered away into the holding pen with its five brothers and sisters.

  “Hold up on th’ sheep, Morgan!” she shouted to the boy in the pen with the unshorn animals. The boy released a shaggy specimen and climbed onto the stone wall. “Go on and bring bock some water, Aiden. Take Morgan with ye.”

  Morna brushed her hands on her formerly white apron and let herself out the gate.

  “Could ye not shoo ’im on, then, mon?” she asked when Dugger caught up with her. “Is ’e a briggand then?”

  “He moight be most anything, mum,” Dugger told her. “He acts moighty peculiar. Willna stop mumblin’ and talkin’ to ghosties.”

  “Oh? Talkin’ to ghosties, is he?” she turned a doubtful eye on her crotchity old blacksmith.

  “Aye, mum,” Dugger said. He twisted his black wool cap in his gnarled hands nervously. What few hairs he had left on his freckled head stood straight up, giving him a comical appearance.

  Lady Ramsay, wife and companion to Laird Timothy Ramsay, walked determinedly across the barnyard, shooing aside the chickens as she went. A pair of geese honked and came running to her heels, thinking feeding time had arrived. They honked along behind her, making further conversation impossible. When she reached the barn, she shushed the geese and Dugger shooed them away with a long stick.

  Inside the dim recesses of the barn, she blinked and waited until her eyes grew accustomed to the light. She could hear a man’s voice mumbling or singing or chanting somewhere near the back wall. The cracks between the boards there allowed strips of sunlight to fall across the straw and farm implements stored in the tack room. A big, gray cat brushed against her legs.

  “Scat, Molly!” she hissed and then proceeded more carefully toward the sound of the voice. As she drew nearer, she realized the words were spoken in Latin. A desperate prayer it seemed.

  “Oh, God, our Father, I beg you, give me this day, give me this day and I will give you my services through all eternity. Oh, Jesus, our Lord and Master, grant me this favor and I will devote my life to your teachings. Oh, God, our Father, I beg you, give me this day, give me this day…”

  “Hello!” Morna interrupted the prayer. “’ere now. How come thee t’ be in me bairn?”

  The praying stopped and a shadowy figure rose up in the straw. He was tall, taller than her husband, Timothy.

  “I beg your pardon and forgiveness,” he said in a low, quiet voice. “I am far from home and lost.”

  “Aye, thot be th’ truth of it, I’d say,” she answered and then narrowed her eyes. His silhouette indicated he might be naked. “’ave ye no clothes, mon?”

  “I’m sorry, I think not,” he answered.

  “Dugger!” she snapped and clamped her mouth shut in anger. “Get th’ mon a blanket! Can ye not see ’e’s in need?”

  “Thank you kindly, my Lady,” the man answered.

  “Air ye clean? ’ave ye anny distempers o’ th’ flesh?” she asked. There were plenty of rumors circulating about another outbreak of the Black Death and plague was not the only thing laying waste to the unwary.

  “No, my Lady,” he said. “I am a man of God.”

  “Ooooh, a mon o’ God, air ye? Then wair ye set upon by highwaymen?”

  “No, a devil’s plague has sent me here,” he said.

  “Plague, mum! ’e said plague!” Dugger said hysterically and threw a horse blanket at the man.

  “D’ye mean a plague or a curse?” Morna asked him.

  “A curse,” he said. “I’m afraid I made some enemies in the Orient.”

  “Oh, a missionary then,” she smiled. Her Timothy so wanted to ride off to the crusades, but his monarch would not hear of it.

  “Yes, of a sort. To the infidels.”

  “Ye sound foreign enough, thot’s th’ truth,” she said. “I’m not above showin’ a bit o’ charity. Stay where ye air and I’ll send out some things fur ye. Then we’ll have a bite and see th’ lay of it.”

  “Thank you kindly.”

  Morna practically dragged Dugger back to the house and upstairs to her husband’s bedchamber. She rumma
ged in his trunk for clothing that might fit the stranger in her barn. Her husband was rarely home and would surely not miss a few articles of clothing if things went badly.

  “Now take these out to th’ bairn and stay with our guest. When ’e is presentable, bring ’im insoide.”

  “Aye mum,” Dugger answered sullenly. “Twud nae be advoisable t’ bring a beggar inta th’ ’ouse, mum.”

  “Oh? I brot thee in, did I not?” she asked and raised one dark eyebrow. Her dark blue eyes snapped with amusement.

  “Aye, mum,” Dugger mumbled and hurried away with the clothing.

  Within ten minutes, she was sitting in the kitchen with the ‘man of God’. He was a striking fellow, with large, dark blue eyes like her own, long, black hair and a winning smile. His beard showed streaks of gray, but he somehow seemed ageless. He could have been forty or sixty. It was hard to tell.

  “So,” she said as she poured him a cup of buttermilk and nodded to the cook. The old cook brought him a wooden bowl full of mutton stew with a chunk of crusty bread on top. She laid a spoon on the table and glared at him in disapproval before retiring to the hearth. “Tell me, Sir, what is your name?”

  “Ambrosius,” he said and dug into the stew without further ado.

  “Do ye not thank God fur yur victuals before ye indulge?” she asked.

  “Only when I have time.”

  “Air ye in a hurry, then?”

  “My innards have no time for faith at the moment, my Lady,” he said between chews. “I will ask forgiveness when I am no longer starving.”

  “Ooooh. Thot’s a practical mon. From whence dost thee hail, Ambrosius?”

  “From afar. Too far. Where is this place?”

  “Ye’re a day’s roide from Edinborough to th’ southeast a bit. Air ye from London, then. Ye sound like a Londoner.”

  “Yes, yes, I believe so.”

  “Yur nae sure?”

  “I don’t remember clearly.” He stopped chewing and picked up the break. He looked her in the eyes as he broke off a bite-sized piece of bread.

  Morna felt a sort of electric shock when he looked at her and she reached automatically for her throat. Timothy never looked at her that way. In fact, she couldn’t remember the last time Sir Timothy had looked at her. They had been married only four years and already, she felt old at twenty-five. Her father had declared her an old maid at seventeen and when Timothy had come along four years into her spinsterhood and offered three horses as a wedding gift, her father had readily agreed. Of course, she hadn’t been consulted, but neither had she been unhappy to have found a husband in close friendship with King William, the Lion. A good match, even though Timothy was more than twice her age.

  After a year without heirs, he had abandoned her bed and sought the company of his King once more, leaving her in charge of the rambling farm in the lowlands. Something, Timothy, as a former Highlander had no use for. He was always dragging her back to his original home in the mountains. She, on the other hand, hated the Highlands. Cold, rocky, hard land full of hard close-lipped people. He came home from time to time with some injury or another, stayed until he was mended and then left again. It seemed to matter little to him that he even had a wife and properties.

  “May I ask where your good husband might be?”

  “What?” she jumped and blinked at him.

  “Your husband. I would like to thank him for his hospitality and commend him on the charity of his good wife.”

  “Oh, well, ye’ll be waitin’ a loooong toime t’ do thot,” she laughed nervously. “He’s with King William.”

  “Ahhh, a King’s man, then. A good man, for sure.”

  “Ye’re a strange fish fur a Londoner,” she said and watched him eat with growing curiosity. “If ye be a true mon o’ God… a Catholic, mind ye. Then I moight need yur sarvices in retarn fur me ’ospitality.”

  Ambrosius stopped eating, smiled and bowed his head to her.

  “I am at your service, my Lady, for as long as you might need me.”

  Morna smiled at him and then remembered the old cook. She resumed her somber mode and ordered more bread, butter and wine for him. The cook mumbled under her breath about Englishmen, immorality, devils and treachery as she set out a bottle of mead and another wooden cup.

  “A glass, if you please, Myrna,” Lady Ramsay told her. “And one for me.”

  Ambrosius bent his head over his bowl, but she could see he was still smiling.

  Chapter One of Sixteen

  Lord, you have been our dwelling place throughout all generations.

  “Ahhh. Ohhhh.” Lemarik closed his eyes and smelled deeply of Nicole’s precious supply of strawberry scented bath oil. “Strawberries! I should like to find some in the market. It has been ages and ages since I have tasted them. The little seeds get between one’s teeth and the tiny crunch is so delightful.” The Djinni shuddered to his toes and turned his face to the ceiling as if remembering times past. “Your beautiful mother, Meredith, and your beautiful nephew, Omar, used to love strawberries.”

  Nicole sat in the tub with her sponge clutched under her chin, glaring at her half-brother.

  “Well, you won’t find any in New Babylon, brother!” She snapped at him. “Now will you please get out of my bathroom and let me get dressed?”

  “Ohhhh.” Lemarik set the bottle on the edge of the marble tub and pressed two fingers to his forehead, bowing slightly to her. “A thousand pardons, my sister.”

  She had nearly been frightened out of her skin when the Djinni had suddenly materialized inside the marble shower stall behind the milky glass panels. Nicole clutched a sponge under her chin and waited while he backed out the door into her bedroom, leaving the door open. She grabbed a brightly colored bath towel from the rack and got out of the tub.

  “I have been traveling far and wide,” Lemarik’s voice drifted to her in his clear, sing-song fashion from the next room. “The great creatures are growing in number and this evil one has unleashed the Imgogee hoards from the Abyss. Loathsome monsters with great claws and snapping jaws! I am afraid I lost the better part of my army to them in an ambush. Most unfortunate. Most atrocious! I have come to learn whether my grandson has tasted of the treachery of the beast he allows to live in his palace.”

  “I don’t know what you are talking about,” Nicole shouted to him. “You mean Jozsef Daniel?”

  “Of course! Do not tell me that you are not aware of his true nature, my little sister. Have I not been telling you all along that you are playing with fire?” Lemarik’s tone changed slightly. “He has been coming to your bed. Do not play the innocent with me! We know each other much too well for that. You are drawn to him because he is beautiful as once my son, Omar, charmed you. You are a victim of your desires, my love. You would have done better to have offered yourself to me. I, at least, would have appreciated you for your true nature. We are alike, you and I. We could have made a glorious match. Our children would have put the gods to shame!”

  Nicole wrapped her bathrobe about her and emerged from the bathroom to find him going through the perfume bottles on her dresser, sniffing and smelling each one. Tasting some of them.

  “I don’t know why you came to see me, sir.” She disappeared into her dressing room. “You are barking up the wrong tree.”

  “Wrong tree?” He turned about and then spied a cluster of crystal decanters on her bar. He crossed the room and began to taste the liquors in the bottles. “No. No. No. No. No. Not the wrong tree, the wrong branch, perhaps. You have always been hard-headed, ill-tempered and uncompromising. Why, I venture to say your noggin is as hard as an ironwood tree. These traits, you inherited from our father. He can be most stubborn. I came to offer you another chance to save yourself before it is too late.”

  “Speaking of our father,” Nicole came out of the closet, wearing a pair of dark blue shorts, pulling a flimsy, cotton blouse over her head. She picked up her discarded towel and began to dry her hair. “He is upstairs, you know. Perhaps you
would like to visit him.”

  “I have seen him. That is not our father up there.” Lemarik poured a bit of brandy in a glass and picked it up.

  “That is so our father! I know Mark Ramsay when I see him.” She sighed in disgust and shook her head. “Classic denial. Just because he isn’t swinging that golden sword over his head, doesn’t mean he’s not Mark Ramsay. They did something to him.” She sat on the edge of the bed and scowled deeply. “I know I have never been on the best of terms with him, but I don’t like seeing him like this any more than you do. It’s not right! I happen to take pride in the havoc wreaked by our kind. But Jozsef didn’t do it, General Schweikert did it. The man’s an idiot. A walking fool.”

  “You can drop the pretense, Nicole.” Lemarik smiled at her. “I spoke with Sophia and she told me the truth. She has nothing to hide and nor do you. In fact, my heart was given great hope when I heard of how you visit him every day. The plan you and my grandson have in mind will not work. The Ancient Evil will know the moment you try to take him from the palace. We will have to think of another way to rescue him.”

  “We …we?” She stopped working on her blonde curls and looked at him in surprise. “You just said he is not our father. Why would you help us?”

  “Because you are my family, whether you like it or no.” He crossed the room and hovered in front of her. “You are my sister. My only sister. And your powers are very great, though you do not know it! You must open your mind to who you are. You are the daughter of Adar, the Mighty Hunter and Meredith! Do you know who your mother is? Do you know what she is? I do not think so. But you are no match for the Ancient Evil from beyond the Abyss.” He straightened up and looked down his long nose at her. “Even if you and Bari were to combine your powers, you could not stand against him and he has Hubur to help him. She is most dangerous! Horrible and ghastly in her true form. To look upon her would be utter destruction!”