The Stone of Blood (8 page)

“Bring me the witch!” he demanded.

Moments later a sullen tattered clothed woman stood before him.

She was dirty and barefoot, clad with shackles on her feet.

“You told me it was here Witch!” He barked at the woman and slapped her face!

She turned her gaze back to him slowly and smiled at him with contempt.

“You said Rowan!” Nathanael sneered.

“La
pierre
de sang ne sera jamais la vôtre!” Cria la femme comme elle cracha sur lui!

“The Stone of Blood will never be yours!”
She shouted and then spat on him!

Nathanael’s eyes shown red with fury and his voice grew deeper with wrath! “Don’t leave any of them alive!” he commanded of his men. “Kill them! Kill them all!”

A great wailing of sorrow began as his soldiers moved forward to seal the captive’s fate!

“Wait!” Nathanael suddenly ordered, holding up his hand for them to stop. An intrinsic silence fell over those confined, as they hoped for reprieve, a silence that was replaced immediately by dread as their captor spoke again; this time at a volume they could all but hear.

“Clean this place up!” he said to his officers; turning, walking and wiping his face and brow of the spittle with his handkerchief and then removing his wide brimmed hat. “We have no need to start a war here yet, so let’s not arouse more attention than we already have.”

“You have the cadaver still? The one in the wagon from
Lexington
?” He stated to his men rather than questioned. His chief officer acknowledged.

“Jetez-le dans le puits et les faire boire.” Il a dit dans la langue de sorte que seuls ses hommes pouvaient le comprendre. “Le choléra se propage et ne sera plus sage.”

“Throw it in the water well and make them drink from it.” he said in tongue so that only his men could understand him. “The cholera will spread and no one will be the wiser.”

“Nous allons tous les tuer! Il vous suffit de regarder, comme si elle faisait partie de l'épidémie.” At-il poursuivi, comme il se tourna et sourit malicieusement les gens s’entassent sur les planchers.

“We’ll kill them all! It’ll just look like it were part of the epidemic.” He continued as he smiled wickedly at the people huddled together upon the floors.

“And oh yes.” Nathanael said as he struck a match and lit the end of a finely rolled cigar he had taken from the Rowan House. He checked the time on his Pocket Watch and then breathed in a long deep toke of tobacco and looked upon the woman who was even now, smiling callously at him, clad in chains.

Through lingering wisps and circling rings of smoke he watched her eyes as he slowly exhaled.

“Burn the witch!”

Five

Innocent Blood

The fruits of wisdom and knowledge do not often grow upon the same tree. Knowledge can be obtained through pages of a book or by the impromptu instruction of a teacher. While wisdom however, cannot be found on a book shelf in a library or from guidance for that matter but that of the
One
master; for many have obtained knowledge of this world, while few have ever had the wisdom to use it.

What wisdom had been gained upon that Sunday afternoon when I was five years old, I may never know. Our family had just returned from a local church picnic. A carnival picnic of sorts whereby cotton candy and spinnin’ wheels had filled our eyes with fantasy! Amidst all of the excitement, it had been a single solitary red balloon that had held my imagination. Filled with helium, the balloon floated free upon the air but for a small string attached to its base; the other end of the string bein’ held by my hand.

It was not the joy the balloon had brought into my life, nor its captivating allure but the loss of it that I have most remembered. I could but only stand upon that earth and watch it as its string slipped from my grasp to float freely up and out into the atmosphere, away from me! A place where no clouds obstructed its view and where no winds took it from site!

Mama told me that ‘
my balloon was gone
’ and that she was ‘
really sorry
.
But that there was no way that I could ever get it back
.’

I looked upon my mother’s face with eyes of innocence. And through it all I held on to hope.

And as the shadows of the day became the darkness of the night, my dreams led me to the mornin’ of the followin’ day.

And as I ran to my window and rubbed the sleep from my eyes, I saw the vision of my balloon hoverin’ just above the ground by which it had left! My balloon had returned!

There was no explanation, but aforethought.

Had the God of the universe held back the winds in answer to the still small prayer of a child such as me? Was it the balloon or its return to me that I was to remember?

Was its purpose that I relate this story to others as an example of God’s power even in the smallest of things?

I truly believe that it can be the smallest of things or in the littlest of events that make up who we are and who we are to become.

What had been gained from this small and seemingly unremarkable event, I may never know.

Maybe nothin’; but maybe it was an important somethin’, that God wanted me to remember.

***

July 1793

T
wo fractions of the Order followed Louis Philippe d’Orléans as he journeyed through the
valley of Tornio River at the northern end of the Gulf of Bothnia, and as he
traversed across Europe
a
nd to the Americas, never staying in one place for more than forty-eight hours at a time.

One sect sought only to protect the carrier of the ‘Sang Pierre’ (Blood Stone) and to shift control of it from the Aristocracy to the Church of Rome; making opportunity for him to meet with the Sulpicians as he sojourned to Havana, and giving him juncture to make the transition of the stone by his own accord.

The remaining sect sought only the death of the young royal and to take control of the ‘Sang
Pierre
’ for themselves.

As the eldest son of the reigning House of Bourbon,
Louis Philippe d’Orléans was the ‘Prince du Sang’ (Prince of Blood), the keeper of the Stone of Blood (Sang Pierre) that was passed unto his family from the town of
Valais
.
For the legend foretold that as long as it was kept safely within his bloodline, his kin would continue to sit upon the thrown.

The town of
Valais
lay
in the Duchy of
Savoy
in southeastern
France
and
Switzerland
.
Un
der the reign of Charles
VII
in the fifteenth century, Witch trials were conducted by Church and Crown; trials of witchcraft that included lycanthropy; the act of humans changing themselves into unnatural beasts, embracing the call of the ‘werewolf'.

Legends spoke of an innocence lost; of the most beautiful young maiden a Royal’s eye had ever seen, with flowing locks of auburn hair and eyes of emerald green. She was a commoner girl born into the world barely sixteen summers old. He had spoken to her as she had passed him in the fields and he had thanked her as she had drawn water for him from his well.

Her speech was as soft as a whisper, and as delicate to him as an orchid flower; just as he imagined her skin to be.

Lust consumed him for the want of her flesh as he followed her with his eyes.

The Royal’s wife however, was consumed all the more with jealousy and rage! For as you see; she was in secret, a practitioner herself in the darkened arts of witchcraft; and with brewed potion, by darkened night and stolen lock of hair, she cast unto the girl this spell.

“
Des
flames et le feu Oh bête vorace brûlera sur son site. Oh l'esprit du toucher liésessence qui
marche
au milieu de la nuit. En Lieue Tarifaire et de pied du roi par quatre-vingts chaînes Gunter
,
à la poussière de retour si l’automne l'ombre sans lui de s'abstenir
.
De peur que sera le retour du sang ou le nom de libérer tes os innocents, qui se trouvait entre un enfer inconnu, au sein de la pierre en martyr
.
”

“Of flame and fire oh ravenous beast shall burn upon her site. Oh spirit bound of essence touch that walks amidst the night.
In lieue tarifaire and pied du roi by eighty
Gunter’s chain, to dust return if shadow fall without her to refrain. Lest Will return of blood or name to free thy innocent bones, that lay betwixt an unknown hell, within a Martyr’s stone.”

And so the curse was spoken and the beautiful young maiden
was accused of witchcraft and was cast into the fires! And all who witnessed her death by flame became the ravenous beast! From the ashes came the Martyr’s stone, the blood of the innocent; the ‘Sang
Pierre
’; a blood curse that would be handed down throughout the line of Kings.

A blood curse is the strongest and most difficult of all to be broken. Such was the curse Man brought upon himself in the Garden of Eden. It was a curse that would be passed from Father to son throughout the generations, but not through ‘the iniquity of the mothers’. Adam, not Eve was the head of the household. It was upon him then to carry the responsibility of the
human race. When he chose to disobey God, he did so with
his eyes open. Eve was deceived, not Adam. And so he was responsible for sin to pass from generation to generation. Scripture does not attribute sin to be passed from the mother to her children; this is how Jesus could be born of a woman, but not of sinful flesh.