Free The Mystic Rose by Stephen R. Lawhead Page B

called Bertrano, Archbishop of Santiago de Compostela, and addressed to none other than Pope Adrian IV. After the usual greetings and salutations, the archbishop announced that the “secret of the ages” had been revealed—a marvelous treasure had been discovered in Aragon, a part of eastern Iberia which had been, until recently, a Saracen domain. His reason forwriting, he said, was to seek the aid of the Holy Father in the protection of this treasure, which he called the Rosa Mystica . Owing to the increased instability of the region, he greatly feared the Mystic Rose would be captured, or destroyed, and “the greatest treasure in the world would be lost for ever”—a calamity which, he said, would never be forgiven.
    The archbishop asked the pope to send faithful and trusted servants guarded by a fearsome company of knights to retrieve the treasure and carry it back to the Holy Land so “that which is beyond all price, the treasure of the ages, our very real and manifest hope for this present age and the kingdom to come, the Mystic Rose, might be re-established in Jerusalem” where it rightfully belonged.
    As she pored over the text, she wondered what this treasure might be, and why the White Priest wanted her to become involved in this affair. The more she thought about it, the more strange and fantastic it all became. In de Bracineaux’s chamber, Cait had accepted his appearance as normal and natural as meeting a friend in an unexpected place. But now it seemed anything but natural. Put away your wrath, and believe, he had told her, and promised that when she was finished she would receive the desires of her heart.
    Well, what she desired most was revenge. Lord, she prayed, folding the parchment letter carefully, make me the instrument of your vengeance.
    She wrapped the letter in a piece of cloth and hid it under her father’s clothing and belongings at the bottom of his sea chest, then lifted out her most precious possession. It was a book— her book, written by her father during his sojourn in the caliph’s palace in Cairo. Removing it from the heavy cloth bag, she ran her fingers over the tough leather binding with its fine, tight rawhide stitching—the work of the Célé Dé monks of Caithness. She carefully untied the braided leather cord, opened the cover, and began turning the heavy, close-written parchment pages.
    The original, faithfully rendered by the Cypriot monks, remained in the abbey church at Banvar. The ever-thoughtful Padraig had ordered the good brothers of Caithness to produce a copy of the Lord Duncan’s manuscript which he had then bound on one side and presented to Duncan to give as a gift to the daughter for whom it had been written.
    Her father had read it aloud to her when she was a little girl. But as she grew older and her command of Latin increased, Cait had been able to read more and more of it for herself. She could not count the winter nights she had spent before the hearth, wrapped in her mother’s old shawl, tracing the fine-scripted lines with a fingertip. While her body was confined to a draughty, wind-battered house in snowy Scotland, in her mind she wandered lost in the labyrinths of the caliph’s palace, or followed the Amir’s caravan across burning deserts with the severed head of proud Prince Bohemond on her back.
    Over the years she often found herself going to the book as to an old friend. Indeed, she could recite much of it from memory. But this night, as she opened the heavy leather cover and felt once more the solace of the familiar, there was a fresh urgency to the words she knew so well. For though it comforted her to hear again her father’s changeless voice, speaking to her across the distance of oceans and years, she realized for the first time that these well-known words could instruct and guide her. In these self-same pages she had first learned of the White Priest, and tonight, this very