Kingdom Come (63 page)

Rory stood back as Bud positioned everyone around the crypt. Hands folded before her lips as if praying, she watched anxiously as Bud took charge, positioned the crowbar, and began to pry the lid off. After three grunting heaves, there was a cracking sound and the lid shifted.  Dust and pebbles rained down on the floor as Bud heaved again and this time, the lid slid forward.

Everyone took deep breaths and wiped their hands off; the red-headed teenager had managed to pinch a finger and was nursing a bloody cuticle.  But Dan had no patience for the weary or wounded.  He wanted to see what was inside almost more than Rory did.

“Come on, now,” Dan boomed. “Put your backs into it.”

He sounded like he was hollering to his rugby buddies and not like a dignified earl with a family over one thousand years old. Rory saw more and more of Kieran in the man. Bud heaved with the crowbar again, Marc shoved with all his might, and the lid suddenly slid about a foot off its base.  It was balanced precariously on the edge of the sarcophagus, but the coffin was now wide open and the contents easily viewed. Before Bud could stop her, Rory rushed up to take a look.

“Watch out,” he cautioned. “The lid is just balancing. It could go crashing down and I don’t want you to get hurt.”

Rory couldn’t even answer him as she gazed down into the dusty, ancient crypt that hadn’t seen the light of day in over eight hundred years.  Around her, everyone else was doing the same thing, including Reverend Hogan. Faces that had been previous filled with doubt or curiosity were now glazed with awe, for laying supine at the bottom of the well-made crypt was an enormous knight in nearly pristine twelfth century battle armor.  A thin layer of sheer white fabric covered him; some kind of linen. It was his burial shroud. Before Bud could grab her, Rory climbed in.

“Rory,” Bud positioned himself next to the lid so he could at least try to hold it back should it shift and come crashing back down. “Honey, get out of there. Let us move the lid off completely.”

Rory heard his words but ignored him; she was straddled over the massive body, heart in her throat, breathing coming in harsh pants. Flashes of the first time she had excavated him lit in her mind, an odd sense of déjà vu sweeping her.  Once, she had stood in this exact same position over Kieran, inspecting the crusader she had just discovered in the dusty ruins of Nahariya.  It was that moment all over again, only now in an ancient English cathedral.

The recurrence, the emotions, were too much to take.  Rory went down on her knees, straddling Kieran’s pelvis in much the same fashion as she had when they had made love eight hundred years ago.  She could feel him hard and firm beneath her, but cold as the grave. With shaking hands, she carefully removed the thin veil of dusty fabric that covered his face.

It was a shock to see Kieran looking much the same as the effigy on the top of his crypt. His skin was colored by the dust that coated his skin, but the features were strong and handsome as if he was merely sleeping. She sat a moment, gazing at him, feeling the tears come yet again only this time, they were tears of joy and fairly short lived. There was no more time for tears.

Without hesitation, Rory put her hands on either side of the man’s face and leaned forward. Her short breaths were causing the dust on Kieran’s face to flare up and cloud.  Slowly and with great reverence, Rory’s soft and rosy lips gently touched his.

 It was a tender kiss, one full of the love that had carried them across the span of time and ages.  She suckled his bottom lip gently, his top lip, continuing to kiss his cheeks and nose, the only other flesh exposed beyond the mail and helm.
Like the first kiss she had ever given him, the one that had awakened him from his grave in Nahariya those years ago.

“I’m here, baby,” she murmured. “Wake up and look at me. I’m here.”

She sat back, continuing to stroke his cheeks.  Even though there were several faces watching the extremely odd and rather morbid exchange, for Rory, she and Kieran were the only two people in the entire world at the moment.  She leaned down and kissed him again, trying to think back to the first time she had awoken him and wondering how long it took for him to awaken. She had been drunk at the time and had fallen asleep between the time she had kissed him and the time she had noticed he was becoming lucid.  Therefore, there was no way of knowing.  Only time would tell.

Minutes passed and he remained still. Rory tried not to feel rising despair as she remained straddled on him, gazing down at his face and looking for any signs of life. More minutes passed as she continued to watch and wait. Finally, someone reached down and put a hand on her shoulder.

“Rory,” it was Bud. “What… what are you doing?”

Rory stroked Kieran’s cheek. “Awaking him from his eternal sleep like I did the first time.”

So much for her not sounding like an idiot in front of strangers, he thought. Bud didn’t dare look at the people around him as he bent over the side of the crypt.

“Honey,” he said softly. “He’s dead. He’s been dead for eight hundred years.”

Rory’s head snapped up, the hazel eyes intense and deadly serious. “No, he’s not,” she insisted strongly. “He had Kaleef put him into stasis again. He’s waiting for me to awaken him again just like I did before. Bud, somehow he knew that once I killed the prince, somehow, someway, Fates or God or whatever you believe in had transported me back to my time. I’ve been thinking about why that happened and the only thing I can come up with is either I did what I was supposed to do, thereby ending my need to be in Medieval times, or I changed history so much that everything, including my own life and timeline, was seriously altered.  I just don’t know which it is. But Kieran knew what had happened; he knew that I had come back to my time so he had Kaleef put him back to sleep with succotrine aloes, zedoary gentian, saffron, rhubarb and agaric.  It was the same stuff he used before.  He had Kaleef do it again and wrote me a letter about it, knowing that I would know how to awaken him.”

She sounded completely, utterly insane.  Bud looked at her, feeling so very sorry for her and thinking that she had completely snapped. He reached down gently, trying to get a good grip on her.

“Come on,” he whispered. “Let me help you out of there. It’s not good for you.”

Rory threw herself down on top of Kieran’s body, her head against his mailed chest and her arms gripping him tightly.

“No!” she cried. “Just give him a few minutes, Bud. You’ll see what I mean. I’m not leaving.”

Bud looked up then, glancing at Dan, the lawyers. They all gazed back at Bud with varied degrees of concern. The Reverend even closed his eyes and began praying.  Bud figured he’d better get her out of there before she stared foaming at the mouth so he reached both hands inside the crypt and prepared to drag her out by the arms. But two words from Rory stopped him in his tracks.

“It’s beating!” she suddenly screamed. “I can hear his heart. It’s beating!”

Concerned expressions suddenly turned to those of shock and disbelief. Rory sat bolt upright, such joy on her face that all of the poets in the entire world could not have adequately described her expression. She was positively radiant. She grabbed Bud, pulling him down into the crypt as she struggled to make room for him.

“Listen!” she begged. “Listen for yourself!”

Bud nearly fell into the crypt as Rory pulled, trying not to make an ass of himself in the process.  He truly thought she was losing her mind.  But there was something so electric in her manner and expression that he couldn’t resist doing as she asked.  Rory practically shoved his head down against the dusty, ancient tunic, and Bud was feeling really stupid as he let her do it. But he laid his head down against the chest of the corpse, knowing he wasn’t going to hear anything and genuinely shocked when he, too, thought he heard faint heartbeats. Startled, he remained with his ear pressed against the corpse for several long, painful moments.

“Well?” Dan finally couldn’t stand it any longer. “What do you hear?”

Bud didn’t move and he didn’t respond. He lay there, listening intently, closing his eyes as if that would amplify his hearing. After several long moments, he finally opened his eyes and sat bolt upright, staring down at the body beneath him.

“I’ll be damned,” he breathed. “It… it sounds like heartbeats.”

He looked at Rory, stricken. The truth was that Bud had never believed Kieran was who he said he was; he hadn’t been there when Rory had resurrected him in the morgue at Middlesex hospital and he’d never been able to accept that the massive, good looking man had been Sir Kieran Hage in the flesh, the crusader he had excavated in Nahariya.  But now here he was, at the beginning of what was looking like, for all the world, a miracle. He simply couldn’t explain it. But his ears didn’t lie.

“Do you hear it?” Rory asked softly.

He nodded, tearing his eyes away from her and looking back at the man beneath him. “I hear it,” he muttered with some disbelief.

Bud leaned down to take a closer look at Kieran’s face, the mucosa membrane, the texture of the flesh.  He put his fingers on his carotid artery, feeling an extremely faint yet fairly regular pulse.  

“I don’t believe it,” he whispered. “I don’t goddamn believe it. He’s got a pulse.”

Rory was so excited that she was shaking. “I told you,” she crowed, looking around to the faces staring back at her.  She came to rest on Dan and her smile broadened. “You wanted to know who I am? My name is the Lady Rory Elizabeth Osgrove Hage.  My husband is Kieran Hage and my son is Tevin Hage.   I met my husband when Dr. Dietrich and I excavated a crusader’s grave in the Syrian city of Nahariya.  Based on ancient texts from a story passed down for centuries, we were looking for the reputed crown of thorns that Jesus Christ had worn on Mt. Calvary but ended up finding a knight from the Third Crusade instead.  What we didn’t realize at the time is that the crusader was linked to the crown of thorns.”

No one immediately responded.  Dan wanted so badly to believe; in fact, he realized that he already did.  It was the craziest, wildest story he’d ever heard, but he couldn’t dispute the man coming to life before him.  He almost felt as if he was living a dream; he was sure at some point he was going to wake up.  But right now, he had to admit, it was pretty fascinating. Eight hundred years of a Hage mystery was finally coming to a conclusion.

“Dr. Dietrich?” he looked from Rory’s smiling fact to the back of Bud’s head as the man remained hunched over the supine knight. “Is this true?”

Bud was almost dull with shock and realization, but managed to nod his head. “It is,” he grunted, turning to look at the stunned people around him. “Every word of it.”

Dan swallowed hard, his gaze returning to Rory.  “But I still don’t understand,” he murmured. “What’s all this about an eternal sleep?”

Rory’s gaze returned to Kieran, watching Bud as the man continued to feel his neck for a pulse. “Your ancestor, Kieran Hage, was entrusted with a peace mission while at the siege of Acre,” she explained quietly. “The Muslims met with him in secret, asking him to take an offering of peace to King Richard.  This offering was the crown of thorns worn by Jesus Christ. However, some of the men in Kieran’s peace party didn’t want to see the war end. They turned against Kieran and tried to kill him.  Mortally wounded, Kieran went to a man he thought was a physic but it turned out that the old guy was really an alchemist. He gave Kieran a potion that put him into a type of suspended animation so he wouldn’t bleed to death.  Eight hundred years in a grave sealed up his wound and that’s when Bud and I discovered him.”

Dan was listening with amazement and wonder. “But there has to be more,” he insisted. “He’s here, in this crypt, and not in a grave in Nahariya. More than that, I have the crown of thorns that he brought back from the Crusades in my possession. Nobody knows about it; or, at least, I thought nobody knew about it outside of immediate family but you knew about it. How did you know?”

Rory smiled faintly. “That’s the other half of the story,” she muttered, opening her mouth to explain but Bud abruptly cut her off.