The Centaur (37 page)

“Captain Galipoli, I presume?” He raised both eyebrows, but the Captain pulled the pistol and trained it on him.

“Who are you? What do you want here?” The Fox captain asked him.

“I’m Lucio Dambretti. I have come to check on… Mr. Ramsay,” Lucio had not expected this sort of welcome.

The captain backed toward the library door without taking his eyes off of Lucio.

“Surely you have not forgotten me, sir?” Lucio frowned.

“These are dangerous times, sir,” the captain returned the frown and then called for Nicholas.

Mark’s grandson emerged from the library, followed closely by another soldier and his brother, Gregory.

“Sir Dambretti,” Nicholas eyed him suspiciously. “Where did you come from? How did you get here? Is anyone else with you?”

“I would prefer to be welcomed as a friend than interrogated in the front hall,” Lucio’s temper began to raise its nasty head. “Where are Mark Ramsay and Nicole?”

“Please forgive them, Sir,” Gregory stepped between his brother and the Italian. “We have had a bit of bad luck and were just discussing what we should do next, weren’t we, Captain?” The smaller of the brothers looked up at the captain. “Won’t you come in and have a cup of coffee?”

Gregory stepped back and Socrates put away the pistol. Nicholas held out his hand and Lucio entered the familiar warmth of the library. The smell of old leather and parchment struck his nose. The only thing missing was the ever-present set of wolfhounds lying on the hearth. Nicholas, Gregory and Galipoli followed him inside and the soldier went for coffee.

Lucio did not sit down, but stood warming himself in front of the fire.

“What sort of bad luck? Is someone hurt?” He asked, expecting the worst.

“We don’t know,” Nicholas told him point blank. “Miss Sophia and Mr. Ramsay are missing. Nicole is upstairs. She is… not herself.”

Lucio digested these words for several seconds. It was much worse than he had expected.

“Missing? How long?” He asked.

“Since last night,” Gregory answered. The younger brother perched on the edge of the desk. The captain hovered near the door as if ready to take flight and Nicholas sat on the old leather footstool, wringing his hands. He had taken the trouble to heart, blaming himself for it. His first real assignment and he had failed to successfully fulfill his duties.

“And who saw them last? Did they leave together?” Lucio tried to remain calm. He did not understand why they were not volunteering information.

“I saw Mr. Ramsay shortly before he disappeared,” a deep voice from the far end of the room startled the Italian.

A strangely clad man with long, white hair and distinctive features sat cross-legged on the floor with a book in his lap. Lucio had not noticed him when he had entered the library.

“Who are you?” The Golden Eagle blurted the question.

“He is Mr. Barshak. A friend of Nicole and her father,” Nicholas stood up. “Mr. Barshak, this is Lucio Dambretti, a friend of the family.”

“Ahhh, a pleasure to meet you, sir,”
Barshak replied without getting up.

“He is a healer,” Gregory added quickly.

“I see,” Lucio narrowed his eyes. A friend of Nicole? There was no way that Sophia’s Mark could have had time to make friends in Lothian. “And where did you see… Mark?”

“He was with us in the wood and then he suddenly returned home as if he had remembered something important. I can’t say exactly what it might have been,”
Barshak answered the question, but kept his large gray eyes on the captain.

“With who? Who is ‘us’?” Lucio asked him.

“Myself and Nicole,” Barshak answered.

“In the wood? What were you doing in the wood?” Lucio’s curiosity was screaming a thousand questions.

“That is confidential,” Barshak returned his attention to the book.

Lucio opened his mouth to speak and was interrupted as Bari Kadif entered the library, followed by the soldier with coffee and another two soldiers with very muddy boots.

“Sir Dambretti!” Bari crossed the space and stuck out his hand. “It is good to see you, sir. Did my father send you? This is disastrous! Completely inexcusable. We need more security here, sir. These men cannot possibly protect us. The house is too large and the grounds are much too extensive for a handful of soldiers and one captain.” Bari also sent a strange glance at Galipoli.

“Have you found nothing that might have indicated where they went? Was there someone else involved? An abduction, perhaps?” Lucio was highly perplexed. “Where did you say Nicole is?”

“She is upstairs unconscious,” Bari shook the Knight’s hand and his head simultaneously.

“Unconscious? Was she attacked? For God’s sake, tell me what is going on here!” Lucio accepted the coffee and sat down on the hearth almost breathless.

“Not exactly…” Nicholas cringed.

Everyone began to talk at once and the noise was ridiculous. Lucio sat staring at them in confusion for several minutes before holding up one hand to signal for silence.

“
Bastante!
One at a time, please,” he sighed. “Let us sort this out and perhaps I can help you.” He looked at the captain. “Let us hear the military opinion first.”

((((((((((((()))))))))))))

“John?” Lily opened the door to the library and stood looking at him.

He sat on the floor in the middle of the room with a book in his lap. He closed the book, picked up the candle stick and stood up.

“Aye?” He was startled every time he saw her.

“Supper is ready,” she said quietly and he nodded. It was unreal, all wrong, but he could find no explanation. He would have to take one of the horses and ride out. See what he could find.

“Good,” he placed the book on an antique table and followed her into the kitchen. They sat at the long table together while the cook served up bowls of thick mutton stew and plates of poached salmon. One of his favorite dishes.

“How did you know I like salmon?” He asked after sampling it.

“Mark Andrew likes it,” she smiled. “I thought perhaps it was an inherited taste. He does look so very much like you. Did you know?”

“Aye,” he nodded and spooned up a hefty bite of the stew.

“So you are in contact with your sons?” She asked and he almost choked. He was going to have to be more careful or something was going to come up that he’d just as soon not answer.

“Yes, I am,” he said shortly.

“Good. I’m glad to hear it,” she bent her head over her own supper. “I was afraid that they would come and find you here.”

“Oh, of course.”

“Then they already know about you… us?”

“Yes, they do. They’re fine boys, they understand.”

“Good.”

The conversation was stilted to say the least. After he had wept and begged her forgiveness, he had spent a great deal of time trying to explain what she was supposed to be forgiving him for. The truth had been impossible and so he had simply told her that he was sorry about leaving her to her miserable life and not staying in touch. She had accepted that.

The meal carried on in silence. The cook bustled about behind them, washing up and Mark wondered who she was and where she had come from. He wondered how Lily Ramsay had come to be in this place and further, how he had come to be here. He could only imagine that his counterpart had somehow learned the truth and dispatched him again. At least he still had his head, but that might have been only because of the presence of what the Urim and Thummin referred to as the Dove. Sir Ramsay might not have wanted to harm his son and so had placed them both here for safe keeping until a better arrangement could be made. It was not a bad alternative. He could do most of what he wished to do here. It was, after all, his house and his lab was no doubt in the cellar, though he had not had the opportunity to check as of yet. There were fine horses in the barn, a good flock in the meadow and good food on the table. The mug of beer next to his plate was not bad either. If this was supposed to be his punishment or some form of imprisonment, he could have done far worse, but he had exchanged one guilt factor for another. Sophia was gone, but Lily had taken her place. Meredith had been here the last time he had lived in the house for any length of time and even she had belonged to someone else.

“Lily?” He asked when the fish was gone.

“Yes, John?” She raised her deep blue eyes to meet his own. It had been her eyes that had attracted him first to her. Her dark hair framed her skin that matched her name and the deep blue of her eyes made her look like a china doll. Something that had not been invented when she had walked the earth. They were the exact same hue as his own. He had attributed it to a slight case of narcissism on his part. They could have been brother and sister.

“Does my presence… bother you?” He asked hesitantly.

“I haven’t had time to learn that,” she answered honestly.

“If you like, I’ll stay in the barn,” he offered.

“I wouldn’t hear of it,” she shook her head. “What would Luke and Mark say if they learned that I had turned you out of doors to sleep with the sheep?”

He did not answer that question. He could well imagine what they would say.

“Luke was here not long ago,” she continued. “He brought Mark’s wife for a visit. She had been here before once with their son John Paul. A fine lass,” she blushed with pride. “Why he was the spitting image of his father and he was named after you, no doubt. A grand name. And Meredith, ah Meredith. Now, she is a jewel indeed. Mark has made himself a fine family. Luke tells me that he, too, has made a good match and has two sons. Michael and Galen. I would love to see them, but they are away at university.”

“I see. Yes, of course they would be,” ‘John’ nodded his head and waited for the confusion to subside. It seemed that everyone in the family knew of this place. If they had been coming to visit. Michael? Galen? Who were these and if John Paul were still a boy? It was some sort of time imbalance or perhaps the alternate universe from which Meredith had snatched him from the jaws of death at Sir Beaujold’s hands. He shuddered at the memory of that brush with fire. “Then you would not mind if I stayed on a bit?”

“You stay as long as you like, but if you…” she stopped and looked pointedly at the cook. The woman laid down the pot she had been scrubbing and shuffled toward the back door. When the door had closed, Lily continued. “If you plan to live here openly, then it would be marriage or nothing. I’ll not risk a scandal that could become common knowledge through the county. My poor husband has been dead for quite some time. It would not be particularly wise to…”

“I understand,” he held up one hand to stop her. Her face was deep red. The subject did not come easily to her. “You need say no more, but if I stay in the house, the servants will talk.”

“Then I suggest that we do the honorable thing and make our sons legitimate, John. Do you not think that they deserve it?” She raised both eyebrows. “Do you want them to go about being called bastards by everyone in the county? Now that you’ve come home, everyone will know what they are about and don’t think for a minute that the tongues are not already wagging, sir, they are. So tell me, do you think that they deserve such a nasty reputation in this day and age? It might wreck their professions and I am right proud of both of them. Why, Mark Andrew is said to be a fine physician and scholar down London way and your eldest son, Luke, has been on crusade twice with his brother and made a grand name for himself in Edinborough. You should see the awards and honors heaped upon both of them. The attic is fairly bursting full of important papers attesting to their worthiness. Think of your grandsons, John. Think of your daughters-in-law, precious lassies that they are! Do they not all deserve a decent life far removed from such petty disgraces that were none of their own doings?”

He was speechless at first and then he smiled.

“O’ carse they desarve it,” he nodded and finished off the mug of beer and then sprayed the foamy liquid on the table as the gravity of his hastily spoken words sank into his confused brain.

Lily raised her own mug of beer and toasted him heartily before downing the frothy liquid to the last drop. She wiped her mouth on the back of her hand and belched loudly.

“Now thot’s wot I coll a gud draft,” she smiled broadly at him.

Stand, stand, shall they cry; but none shall look back.

Cardinal Paolo Gambrelli held the oil lantern high over his head as he surveyed his work. The colored lines of chalk were drawn very carefully on the tiled floor. The drawing, itself, was quite an accomplishment in his opinion. His little secret vault was located in an obscure part of the sub-basement storage under one of the minor libraries used primarily by the older members of the Pope’s inner circle. Here in these rooms, forgotten by the world and disguised by their simplicity of design were some of the rarest jewels of all the Vatican’s treasures in literary form. Here was stored the sacked contents of the Library of Alexandria, brought back personally to Rome from Egypt by Julius Caesar, himself. The entire world assumed the scrolls and manuscripts once kept in the greatest library in the ancient world had gone up in flames along with Cleopatra’s pride and joy, when Caius Julius Caesar had invaded Egypt in pursuit of his arch-rival, General Pompey. In the ensuing hostilities, Julius not only defeated Pompey, but he had overthrown the Egyptian King, Ptolemy, as well.