The Crusader ("The Crusader" Prequel to "Kingdom Come") by Kathryn Le Veque Page A

scrutinizing a particularly lovely drawing of a crumbling
citadel when an odd notation, hastily written, caught her eye.
    Acre, it
said. Somewhere by the bottom of the page she caught the name of the all-mighty
Saladin and another strange name she couldn't quite make out. El-Hadid or
Jadid, she thought. Curious, she rubbed her eyes, trying not to grind mascara
into her corneas, and tried again.
    A
Christian offering of Peace. That much she could decipher. But she couldn't
figure out if Sir Kieran meant the Christian armies offering a truce or
Saladin's army offering a gesture of harmony. The writing was smeared, as if he
had written in haste and failed to properly sand the ink before it could dry.
El-Hadid's name came up once more, directly linked to Saladin, and Rory's
interest was piqued.
    Turning
the page, she was distressed to note it was completely blotched, almost
illegible. Squinting at the smeared writing, she picked up her pen and began to
transcribe the page letter by letter, hoping to make some sense of it. In the
distance, she could hear a cock crowing, announcing the onset of a bright new
day. But she ignored the rooster and everything else around her; all that
mattered at the moment was the message Sir Kieran had had such difficulty
writing.
    Again, a
mention of an offering a peace. A Christian offering. El-Hadid had offered,
Kieran had accepted. But like the pieces to a puzzle that didn't quite fit, Rory
put the pen down and started to read aloud, hoping she would be able to better
sound out the words. A syllable here, a word there, but nothing that made a
great deal of sense. Sir Kieran was trying to tell a story, a story that had
been mussed and faded by the passage of time, and Rory felt her frustration
mount.
    Then came
the name Simon again. This time, the words surrounding the name were biting and
angered. She thought she came across the word 'betrayed', but she could not be
sure. The further she read down the page, the more she began to realize a
change in Sir Kieran's attitude. No longer was he the tolerant knight she had
come to know; his fury was evident, a disbelief in what had become of his
glorious mission to rid the Holy Land of the Muslim insurgents.
    Even
with the volatile emotions Rory was sensing, still, Sir Kieran never rambled
and he was very exact in what he wished to say. If only she could make sense of
it. Nearing the end of the journal, she came to suspect that he had somehow
been double-crossed by Simon, but the exact circumstances had yet to make themselves
clear. El Hadid was mentioned again, but almost in passing. More muddled ink, a
few water stains and brown splotches she thought might be blood.
    Confused
with the tale to the point of frustration, Rory hunched over her collapsible
desk as her tent began to warm with the first rays of a new sun. As she sounded
out several more words, writing a few of them down for future reference, she
came across a clear reference to Jesus Christ. Not God, as he had referred to
his Lord throughout the chronicle, but Jesus Christ himself, and words pleading
forgiveness from God's only son.
    Rory
took off her reading glasses, the hazel eyes circled with fatigued and her brow
permanently furrowed as she struggled to read the final passages of the
journal. The last page was completely illegible, so she focused on the bit of
comprehensive text preceding it. Finishing the lines, she read them again and
again. Then she simply stared. Suddenly, as if a fire had been lit, her eyes
bulged to the point of exploding and she stood up so quickly that her chair
toppled.
    Staring
at the volume still clutched in her hands, Rory tried to read the passage again
but realized she was shaking so badly that such a feat was impossible. Taking a
step back, away from the table, she stumbled on her overturned chair and
scrambled from the tent.
    The
journal remained clutched against her chest as she struggled across the sand,
shoeless, striving for the grave on the crest of the