The Mystic Rose Read Online Free PDF Page A

consul inquired, lifting a hand to the empty chamber. “Where are they to be found?”
    â€œDo not mock me, sir!” snarled Cait, her voice growing cold. “I know what I saw and there was no mistake.” Taking up the skirt of her mantle she spread it before her. “This!” she said, shaking the cloth angrily. “This is my father’s blood I am wearing. De Bracineaux stabbed him. If you will not do anything about it, then I will.”
    â€œI urge you to reconsider.” Angry now, the consul rose from his chair. “Renaud de Bracineaux is a man of great esteem and even greater renown—a friend and favorite of both King Baldwin of Jerusalem and Emperor Manuel. He is a guest of the Basileus, and I would not presume to trouble him on the basis of the scant evidence you provide. Furthermore, I warn you: should you persist in repeating this accusation, you will certainly be dealt with most harshly.”
    â€œOh, I am through with accusations,” Cait informed the official icily. “I may accept your judgment, but I will not suffer the injustice.”
    With that, she turned her back and strode from the room. She wept in the street as she walked back to the cathedral, and then again as she sat with her dear father’s body and waited for a hired cart to come and collect his remains, then to be taken to the church where he and Sydoni had been married. Following a short negotiation, an agreement was reached where, for a generous gift to the monastery, the brothers were persuaded to allow Duncan to be buried on holy ground—and according to Caitríona’s specific conditions.
    She left the body to be prepared for burial, and hired a chair and asked to be taken to Bucoleon Harbor; after waiting a considerable time, she had struck a bargain with theoverbusy harbor master allowing her two days’ berthing—again for a tidy fee.
    Daylight was fading by that time, and so she returned to the Church of Christ Pantocrator to pray and wait with her father’s corpse, which had been washed and wrapped in a clean linen shroud, and placed on a low board before the altar. She stayed through the night, lighting candles and listening to the monks chant the prayers for the dead. When the watch service was over, she left the church, waking the bearers she had paid to wait for her outside. They carried her through the still-dark streets down to the Venetian Quay where she roused a boatman who had ferried her to the waiting ship as day broke in the east.
    Now she lay and listened to the sounds of the crewmen clumping around on deck as they set about moving the ship. She remembered the day Duncan had hired the hands—two brothers from Hordaland in West Norway. The elder, called Otti, was a large, hard-working fellow, rendered simple by a fearsome blow on the skull which, although cutting short his apprenticeship as a Viking, no doubt saved his life. The younger, called Olvir, was a dark, quiet, good-natured boy a year or so older than Alethea; since the death of their parents, he had the responsibility of keeping himself and his older sibling fed, clothed, and out of trouble.
    After a time, she heard a splash, followed by the clunk of the anchor onto the deck, and soon sensed a change in the slow, rhythmical rocking of the ship. They were moving. For the briefest instant, she was tempted to go back on deck and order Haemur to sail for home…but no, not yet.
    Soon, but not yet.
    Cait slept for a while, but rose unsettled and unrested. She washed her face again, dressed in a clean undershift and mantle, and wrapped a handsome woven girdle around her waist; into this she tucked her father’s purse, filled with silver, and a slender dagger which had once belonged to her great-grandmother, and which her grandfather Murdo had carried with him on the Great Pilgrimage. She then put on a gown of exquisite thin material—dark for mourning—and chose a long scarf which she