The Royal Stones of Eden (Royal Secrecies Book 1) (17 page)

Within a few minutes, they were back in the room, and Tom started to tie Robbie back up. He put Robbie’s hands behind his back.

“Give a bloke a break, John!” Robbie pleaded. “Don’t leave me so tied up I can’t lie down or anything!”

“I haven’t heard that name in a long time. I suppose my body isn’t as tall as you remember it, eh?” Tom, or rather, John observed. “We used to run amuck, didn’t we? John and Robbie, it was. Those were the old days—weren’t they? Where did you go wrong, mate? What happened to you?”

“You know
bloody
well what happened!” Robbie retorted. “
He
killed and banished Marian,
the bastard! He had no right! I loved Marian with all of my heart!
”—Robbie intentionally leaned toward him seemingly for some comfort as he sobbed quite heavily. Tom patted him on the back and sighed. He felt that some undeserved but inevitable justice had once unfolded.

After a few minutes, Robbie soon regained his composure. Tom tightened the ropes around Robbie as humanely as possible, under the circumstances, and he left to go into the kitchen. Sam was at the kitchen table, and he drank his Kahlua with his usual sugar and cream.

“Have some?” Sam asked. Tom gladly joined him, and they talked about the time that Sam first came to David five years ago, as a soon to retire CIA agent. Sam, at the prompting of Tom, had asked David for his help with a case he was supposedly working on concerning Peter Jenkins and Haj Habib. They both agreed that they would tell David and Mattie the whole story, eventually.

“I think you should go see Sylvia Reeves.”—Tom’s eyes connected to Sam’s golden brown eyes.

“You expect trouble?” Sam asked.

“Just a hunch...and don’t forget the stones!”—Tom’s words had a feeling of foreboding, and he asked Sam to prepare to leave immediately.

Concurrently, Mattie and David still talked below in the out of place but modern conference room.

“I can’t believe that he kidnapped Haj! Peter was our
friend
, David!” Mattie insisted.

“I know that. He helped
you
when you needed financial assistance for schooling, and he helped us
both
with the relocation to Utah. Of course, now I wonder about his motives. I
wanted
to believe in him. There were so many times that he was
there
for us. When you got sick, he took you to the hospital, remember? He funded several of my experiments, and he jump-started my security firm with money. Why
wouldn’t
we trust him? I believed in him. That is one reason why I waited to tell you so many things—because I believed in him.

“In spite of having to monitor him, I never thought he was doing anything wrong. I even sold him some of my gadgets I had invented. He always loved the watch that I modified for him. Remember the cool watch? And, I agree with you—he was our
friend
, Mattie!”

Tom returned and brought a pot of coffee with him. “Precisely!” Tom announced. “He
was
your friend! That, I’m afraid, is now ancient history. So let’s wrap up my story! Then
you
, David, have a
real
friend to rescue!” Tom explained that Sam had to leave on an assignment, a sudden urgent call.

David looked down at his stone on the table. He told Mattie and Tom about the real reason that he had gone to Egypt. It was the intention of David to have his stone analyzed by the world-renowned gemologist, Dr. Hajen Habib.

Mattie included one more addition. “There is another story of stones that
I
must share as well!”—Tom looked at her with a look of trust and admiration as if he already knew every single word or thought that was going to come forward. However, even
he
was surprised at her next action and thought.

Mattie reached into her shirt, down toward her breasts. She grabbed something that was around her neck. She pulled out a long gold chain. On the chain dangled the most dazzling ruby gemstone that they had ever seen. The globe on the table began to glow yellow again as if it agreed with that opinion.

“Where did you get that?” Tom inquired while he gazed at the stone with wonderment. All eyes darted toward Mattie as they awaited her answer.

“I remember,” Mattie replied as if she stared into an imaginary horizon. “My friend—my friend, Aysha, gave it to me!”

Chapter 12

Malkuth Stones of Gan Eden

Part Two

It was an unarguable and plainly evident fact that Marian loved Robin with all of her heart. Likewise, Robin of Locksley promised a love toward Marian to equal her own, love not daunted by the inconveniences of pestilence, famine, or war. Their love even survived a Crusade war, where Soldiers of Christ, so-called, and soldiers of Saladin, the Sultan of Egypt, waged war in Palestine and beyond, in the late 12th century.

It was in Egypt, during one of those wars, that Marian and Robin first met. However, when Robin brought Marian home with him to Britain, they found that war, disease, and poverty did not have one particular address.

Marian’s mother was Egyptian, but her father was from Greece. He died at the hand of a murderer before she ever knew him, during a political uprising in Cairo. After his death, her family lived in severe poverty and was ostracized by the locals.

The enslavement of many women at the time encouraged Marian’s escape from persecution and destitution; it forced her abandonment of her homeland in Egypt. It was a time of severe drought in Egypt, and with the drought came other undesirable problems. The drought left many hungry, and numerous others susceptible to robbery or murder. Some parents even resorted to cannibalism and survived on the flesh of their children. Some children resorted to thievery or prostitution to provide for parents who could not work. It was a time of great social, political, and moral upheaval.

It was about this time, according to rumor, that Robin acquired the knowledge of Nubian archery when he visited the land of Southern Egypt. For when Robin returned from Egypt with Marian, he displayed his newly acquired skills with the bow frequently and developed a reputation for having the greatest of accuracy and the steadiest of hands.

He deployed those same skills on a full moon night, crowded by thick clouds above, as he pointed the tip of his deadly arrow toward an intended and surprised victim. Robin drew his bow squarely on a figure of a man in the shadows, who wore a dark robe and stood in a thick and misty Nottingham Forest. He was hardly visible under the cloak of the midnight hour.

The figure came closer and removed his hood. It was King Richard along with his guard. With them, there was Merlin, a close and new colleague of the king. King Richard’s white complexion shimmered in the crisp moonlight, and his strands of red and blond hair softly wiped his tired cheeks.

“You will put away your weapon, sir!” declared the king.

Robin recognized his friend once the silvery light revealed his features.

“My lord!” he apologized.

Robin thought that he recognized the king’s companion. Merlin was one among several that Robin had surrounded, with the aid of his men, a few months earlier. He took the group of men to the castle in Nottingham, only to find out that an expected King Richard was not there. His brother, Prince John, was at the castle, at that time. Prince John had attempted to declare himself king, while King Richard was in another country, in prison, and another suspected casualty of a Holy War in a foreign land.

As King Richard and Merlin continued to step forward into a brighter moonlight, Robin immediately confirmed Merlin’s identity. Robin remembered that he was the man who had been the least confused, on the night that Robin and his men surrounded him and his other two friends, in the woods of Nottingham. King Richard simply introduced him as Merlin.

Merlin, on the night of the mysterious transport, or transference, had ingested a new and experimental drug. The drug had the effect of removing any memory loss that normally occurred with time or space displacement, but Merlin had not shared the drug with anyone else, not truly knowing its consequences. Merlin, saved from the confusion of memory loss, had held his tongue as to the group’s true mission or their place in time. Merlin had pretended to collapse in a panic of pretended sickness, and then he had fled into the woods of Nottingham when no one was looking. He had restricted his visibility by the magical powers of the royal stones.

Robin was suspicious of a man that could so easily and craftily disappear from his group of agile and alert men, but Richard praised this man.

“This man, Merlin, saved me from prison and compelled my early release with the help of my mother Eleanor, for a ransom of 150,000 silver marks!”—the king pushed Merlin forward and compelled him to bow in humility. “Further, he cured, by new medicine, a foot sickness that I was suffering from, a wound obtained from a battle in a distant country.”

While it was quite true that Merlin had cured the king with a medicine, it was also true that the medicine was, in fact, the magical powers of several stones. That was what miraculously had cured the king. Merlin did not object to the explanation, and he remained silent about the magic that was involved because he suspected that the penalty for witchcraft was most certainly death.

Thinking it disrespectful to question King Richard for details, or to doubt the veracity of his noble friend, Robin decided to change the subject. Nevertheless, Robin suspected that the stranger had not revealed his true intent or reason for being there.

“My lord, you should know that the king, or rather, Prince John, has the castle that may withstand a heavy siege!”—Robin focused away from Merlin as there were more important things than finding fault with the friend of the king.

Richard squinted and gazed into the distance at a castle in the mists, partially hidden by the stirring shadows of an unstable sky. “We must take it! No matter the cost! I have a debt to pay to my doctor here—to Merlin,” Richard insisted.

They spoke in the language of the Kingdom of France, a point that Richard’s brother, John, had tried to use against him in the claim to any legitimate monarchy in Britain.

“Merlin has asked for his payment, the release of his two friends, a Joseph Habib Khidr, and someone named Arthur! It seems that John has imprisoned his friends for unknown and unjustifiable crimes.”—Richard grabbed Robin with both hands and firmly gripped his shoulders. Robin did not tell the king that it was
he
that had submitted the strangers to prison after he had found them in the forest. Robin had suspected them of some treasonous plot.

Not one to question his lordship or friend, Robin, after a quick and mistrustful scrutiny of Merlin, declared, “Then it shall be so, my lord!”

“My lord, I suggest that I take a group of men and break out this man’s friends during our initial siege. Then, if we must retreat, your debt will be paid,” Robin added.

After agreeing to the plan, Robin took Merlin aside. He whispered in his ear, “I know not what magic kept you from our eyes earlier—nor your true purpose—but I shall find it out!”

When Robin pulled away from Merlin, in the narrow glimmer of a moonlight beam, Merlin noticed that Robin’s gold chain around his neck supported a coin embedded in an emerald stone. Each man looked at each other and weighed their cautious distrust. It was on that note of suspicion that Robin and Merlin began their relationship.

On the following night, after a full day of planning, the siege and rescue commenced. The siege was a battle that lasted three days that culminated in a complete surrender. The deciding weapon of advantage was the trebuchet that King Richard used. The giant sling hurled heavy stones that crushed those in its path, sometimes several men at once, and it reduced to rubble its multiple targets of chiseled stone. There would be no capture of the prisoners, however, until the castle’s total and complete surrender.

It was during that three-day siege that Robin misplaced his most treasured possession, his beloved Marian. She stayed in a nearby tent, along with other youthful maidens. Robin found out on the second day of the siege that she was missing. It came about after a stranger had visited her, and immediately Robin suspected Merlin of the kidnapping of his love.

On day two of the siege, Robin went to the tent of Merlin to inquire and to accuse. He woke Merlin from a slumber, but he found no evidence of Marian and no reason to further accuse Merlin of the deed. It was on that night that Merlin agreed, to the surprise of Robin, to assist with the search of Marian.

“I feel like you will have your victory tomorrow. So I beg you to get my friends out of the castle’s prison,” Merlin pleaded. “Then my friends and I will help you search for Marian, your beloved. I give you my word! I suspect a foul villain did this!”—Merlin offered a hand to the unsure one, and the still suspicious and doubtful Robin retreated without an agreement and went back to his tent.

On the third day, at Nottingham, the surrender was complete, and Merlin had his wish granted with the retrieval of both Arthur and Joseph Habib Khidr. There was a great feast held after the battle. It was supposed to be a time to rejoice, but Merlin had serious items to address.