The Rose Demon

Sir Otto Grandison was much changed. No longer the fiery young knight, he was clothed in a cloak of camelhair with rough sandals on his feet. Yet the greatest change, at least to the eye, was his face: no longer smooth and olive-skinned but deeply furrowed, burnt by a fiery sun, whilst his hair had turned grey, and an unkempt beard fell in a tangled mess to his stomach.

Sir Otto Grandison, now a hermit, stood on the cliffs of Masada. Narrowing his eyes, he stared out over the shimmering mass of the Dead Sea. It was just after dawn. The sun had sprung up like a fiery ball and already Grandison could feel the blast of heat from the desert below. He shaded his eyes and stared down the precipitous cliffs. He had slept badly, his mind racked by nightmares, the fears and terrors of the night. He looked back over his shoulder at the small cave built into the rock. A hermit’s dwelling: nothing but rough sacking for a bed; a battered pair of saddlebags hung on a peg; and a stone jar, the gift of a kindly Arab, to hold the water he drew from the well.

Grandison looked up. Vultures hung black against the sky, hovering, keen-eyed for any prey or for those about to die. Sir Otto crossed himself. Usually the vultures would preen their great feathered wings and fly out over the desert but, recently, they had begun to stay, hovering above him. He wondered whether they, too, sensed that death was near.

He stared round the ruins built on the top of these cliffs. A traveller, a seller of perfumes from whom Sir Otto had begged scraps of food in the valley below, had told him about these ruins. How Masada had once been a great fortress built by Herod the Great, he who had slaughtered the innocents at the time of Jesus’ birth. Later it had become a stronghold for the Jews in their violent struggle against the Roman legions, and its last defenders, determined not to be taken prisoner, had poisoned themselves, their wives and their children. Otto often wondered if their ghosts haunted this eagle’s eyrie or if Herod the Great, bound by chains in his own fiery hell, walked the ruins of his former greatness.

During the day, all was well. Sir Otto would stay in his cave, sleep, pray or pore over the battered copy of the Scriptures he had bought before leaving Rhodes. Sometimes, if he saw a camel train or merchants on the road below, he’d go down to beg for coins or food, assuring his would-be benefactors of his prayers to God Almighty. He was always treated gently by Christian, Turk or Jew. Some saw him as a holy man, a hermit; others a madcap fool to live in the heart of the wilderness and haunt the ghostly ruins of Masada.

Sir Otto, feeling the heat of the sun, walked back to the coolness of his cave. He knelt down and stared at the makeshift wooden cross placed on a ledge beside his bed.

‘I cannot blame them, Lord,’ he murmured. ‘I am what I appear to be: a sinner, a lost soul.’

Otto combed his iron-grey, straggling beard. His brother would not recognise him now. He drank a little of his precious water and lay down on his bed.

‘God bless you, Raymond,’ he whispered. ‘Wherever you are.’

He knew they’d never meet again, yet, sometimes, whether it was a temptation from the devil or not, he just wished he could clasp his brother one more time, especially now, before he died. Otto, deep in his heart, realised the Demon had found him. Turning on his side, he stared at the tangle of wild roses, now decaying, where he had thrown them into a corner of the cave. Otto had found these about a week ago, after he had come back from the road below, placed on a stone outside the entrance to the cave. Wild roses! He didn’t know where they had come from or how they could survive for so long in the fiery heat, yet they were a token, a warning: the Rose Demon was, once again, about to enter his life.

Otto rolled back and clasped his hands. He was ready for death. He had atoned for his terrible sin. He had spent seven years here: a life of atonement, for breaking his oath and, above all, loosing the Rose Demon into the world of man.

Otto could never forget Eutyches lying on that marble floor, the blood seeping out of his hoary, cracked head. Raymond and he had taken the princess out of the sarcophagus; so beautiful, so delicate, her body exuding the most fragrant of perfumes. She had not said much but thanked them softly and asked for their protection, which they had solemnly pledged.

Then the Turks broke into the Blachernae. He and Raymond, the princess between them, had fled along the gloomy gallery and up steep stairs which took them out on to a hillside just beyond the walls of Constantinople. They had hoped to reach their ship but a squadron of Sipahis, Turkish light horse, had cut off their escape. He and Raymond were threatened with a violent and bloody struggle. God knows why or how — perhaps in their souls they realised what they had failed to do — but Otto and his brother had allowed the Sipahis to seize the mysterious princess. In return, the Hospitallers had been permitted through.

Bloody and bruised, Raymond and Otto had secured passage on a small boat. By dusk that day they were on board a Venetian galley and, like the rest of the refugees, could only stare helplessly at the shoreline, watching columns of smoke float up from the city. To the Venetians the fall of Constantinople was a disaster but, to the two brothers, it was a personal shame. They had broken their oath. Eutyches had been killed — and the princess? Otto could never forget the hateful look she threw at them as the Sipahis seized her.

‘We did not mean to hand her over,’ Raymond later told the Grand Master of the Knights Hospitallers when they reached the island of Rhodes. ‘The Sipahis took her. It was impossible to rescue her.’

The Grand Master, however, had sat grey-faced, open-mouthed, staring at them. At last he shook himself and rose slowly to his feet.

‘You should have killed her,’ he whispered.

‘Why?’ Raymond had asked.

The Grand Master sat in a window seat and put his head in his hands.

‘Why?’ Raymond followed him across the room. When the Grand Master looked up, his face was suffused with a terrible anger.

‘In his last letter to me,’ the Grand Master jabbed a finger at Raymond, ‘His Imperial Highness, the Emperor Constantine, asked me to name two Hospitallers, two of my most trustworthy men for a task which only a priest and a soldier could perform. I chose you. You took your oath and you broke it. Now, because of your perfidy, not only is a good and venerable priest killed but a terror, much worse than any Ottoman army, has been unleashed on the world!’

Raymond had fallen on his knees before the Grand Master, head bowed, hands clasped. Otto had done likewise.

‘Father,’ Raymond confessed, ‘we have sinned before Heaven, before earth and before thee.’

‘Yes you have,’ the Grand Master retorted, turning his back on them. ‘And, in all justice, I must tell you about your sin. For years there has been a secret held by this Order. I shall not tell you the details.’ He shook his head. ‘There is a woman in England who knows the full story, a devilish tale of horrible evil. In the vaults of the Blachernae Palace at Constantinople a great demon, the Rosifer or Rosebearer, was held fast in a human body.’ He sighed noisily. ‘This Rosifer is both an incubus and a succubus, one of the principal demons of Hell. This Duke of Darkness can move from one body to another, be it male or female, and possess it to its fullness. Only the Sacrament and fire blessed by a priest can destroy its hold and send it back to Hell.’

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.