Paul Doherty - The Rose Demon

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, Lucifer’s henchman, was brought unwittingly by Westerners into Constantinople and possessed a Byzantine princess. The Emperor of the time would have burnt her as a witch but her father and others pleaded for her life. Somehow, I can’t explain, she was put in a drugged sleep and placed in the vault. The Emperor decreed that she would be safe there as long as the Empire was safe. His successors took a great and secret oath that if the city were ever to fall, what should have been done at the beginning would be done then.’

‘And we failed?’

‘Yes,’ the Grand Master snarled as he turned round. ‘You failed!’

‘Father, what can we do?’

The Grand Master refused to answer then. However, a week later, he called them into the Priory church. He was calmer as he walked in silence between them, up and down the transept. At last he stopped and stared up at a picture of Christ in Judgment. On the Saviour’s right the saints, on the left, the damned being driven off to Hell.

‘Every so often-’ the Grand Master began, ‘and I am a man of sixty years, a priest and a soldier of Christ — every so often our humdrum lives are broken by something extraordinary such as this. I have reported as much to His Holiness in Rome as well as our Vicar General but there is little they can do.’ He held a hand up. ‘I have already told you all I know. A great evil has been unleashed on the world and only the Good Lord knows where it will end. You two are responsible. So this is my judgment and there is no appeal. You must leave the Order.’ He silenced their gasps. ‘One of you must spend a life of atonement, prayer and fasting, the life of a solitary hermit well away from the affairs of men. The other, well, the other must spend his life hunting for this demon.’ He paused. ‘It’s now Sunday. Your answer must be with me within fourteen days, the Feast of St Peter and St Paul.’

The two brothers had conferred, their decisions made. Raymond had left for Europe. Otto had come to Palestine on a pilgrimage and founded his own hermitage here on the rocky slopes of Masada. Now and again he had travelled to one of the ports — Sidon, Tyre and even into Acre — but never had he heard anything about his brother. Only once, when he made enquiries from a merchant who traded between Cyprus and Constantinople, had he learnt about a Byzantine princess being given to one of Mohammed’s commanders in his harem. Otto could never discover whether this was the same woman he and his brother had taken from the vaults beneath Constantinople.

‘But she has not forgotten me,’ he murmured. ‘Who else would climb a rocky path to leave roses outside my cave?’

He closed his eyes and cleared his mind. Every time he dreamt, he was back in that vault, the air rich with the smell of roses and, recently, even here, he had caught their fragrance. But no one was ever seen round here apart from an Arab boy tending some goats. Otto had considered returning to Rhodes, to seek the help and assistance of the Grand Master but, the last time he had been at Acre, a pilgrim had told him that the Grand Master had died in rather mysterious circumstances.

Otto sighed and got to his feet. He left the cave and stared down into the valley. The goat boy was moving his herd towards the nearby oasis. Faintly, on the breeze, Otto heard the chime of bells and boyish shouts. He returned to his cave, opened the Scriptures and, once again, turned to the Apocalypse. He read the lines about the Great Beast, the Devil from Hell who wandered the face of the earth determined to destroy God’s creation. Otto closed his eyes.

‘I find it so hard to believe,’ he whispered. ‘So difficult, Lord. She was so young, so beautiful, so serene. Her skin was soft as shot silk. And those eyes, so blue, so innocent.’

He recalled how, when they had hurried along the underground passage, the princess did not lose her dignity but kept up with the knights. When they paused so Raymond could scout ahead, she had simply leant against the wall and begun a song softly in French about a rose, a beautiful rose, which bloomed before Creation ever began.

Otto opened his eyes and stared at the crucifix. Recently, at night, he had begun to hear that song again and he did not know whether it was the wind or his stupid mind playing tricks on himself. Yet he had gone out and stood at the mouth of his cave and seen shapes and forms moving amongst the stones. He had called out, crossed himself and, putting his trust in Christ, returned to sleep.

Otto returned to his study of the Scriptures. For a while he dozed and then, as customary, walked round the ruins. Once the sun began to dip, he took his precious tinder and, gathering the kindling he had collected together and some of the camel dung he had taken from the road below, he lit a weak fire.

For a while Otto just sat and warmed himself, and then he stiffened. The voice was so pure, clear, lilting.

‘In Heaven’s meadows before the world began

The mystic Rose grew there.

But I plucked it as a gift

For the daughter of God.’

Otto whirled round. In the firelight he could see a young boy dressed in a simple white tunic with a stick in his hand.

‘Who are you?’ he stammered.

The boy moved forward. Otto caught the smell of goat but then stood up in horror as the heady fragrance of a rose garden seemed to envelop him. The boy was now walking slowly towards him, tapping his stick on the ground, his dark face broken by a grin. His teeth were pearl white, his eyes full of laughter. He dropped his stick and held out his hands towards Otto.

The hermit could only stare and, as he did so, in that Arab boy’s eyes he recognised the look, the same glance, the same soul he had glimpsed so long ago in the eyes of the Byzantine princess.

The crowd thronged about the gaudily garbed herald who stood on the step of the towering cross of St Paul’s. He lifted his hand and a shrill bray of trumpets silenced the clamour, bringing to the foot of the cross traders, journeymen, tinkers, priests, monks, friars as well as the rifflers, the bawdy girls, the strumpets of the city. All were eager to hear the latest news. The herald raised his hand and again the trumpets brayed.

‘Come on!’ a burly tinker bawled from the back of the crowd before shaking his fist at a pickpocket coming too close to his wallet. ‘Come on! What news?’

The herald ignored the tinker. He lifted one gloved hand, drawing in his breath. He knew his trade: here, at St Paul’s, news of the kingdom was always proclaimed and people would wait for his message. He would proclaim it here, and again at the cross in Cheapside before taking a barge downriver to make the same announcement before the cross at Westminster. A hush descended over the crowd. Even the whores took off their scarlet wigs, stretching their necks to catch the cool breeze and allowing their shaven pates some relief from the constant itching of their flea-infested hairpieces.

‘Know you this!’ the herald began. ‘That Edward IV, by the grace of God, King of England, Ireland, Scotland and France. .’

‘Aye, and of every woman in this city!’ someone shouted from the back of the crowd.

‘Know ye!’ the herald continued relentlessly. ‘That the King and his two brothers, Richard, Duke of Gloucester and George, Duke of Clarence, having destroyed the traitor’s army on the field at Barnet, have now moved west to seek out and destroy the rebel Margaret of Anjou. Yes, she who calls herself Queen, together with her coven of foreign mercenaries, outlaws, wolf’s-heads and other traitorous subjects who have withdrawn their rightful allegiance from the said noble Edward. Know ye this! That any man, giving sustenance to the said rebels, or who refuses to give sustenance to the King’s rightful subjects, will himself be declared a rebel and suffer the full rigours of the law!’