False providence, p.46
False Providence, page 46
Chapter 17
‘Love is all passions is the strongest, for it attacks simultaneously, the head the heart and the senses’
Lao Tzu, 6th Century
Being too many people meant the exodus was split in two, Emile and Christobelle scouting for another warehouse and makeshift camp of their own, Donavan Lowry somewhere in the middle and Colonel Franklin-King at least six miles outside Alexander and talked over coordinates to the Haitian as Christobelle slept against the bark of a ginormous Redland tree.
The day was a trail of scorched earth that Jeremiah had thought had healed a little and that maybe Marr would be satisfied with a coup against New Rome for a little while.
Estefania Hidalgo’s return was both miraculous and hazardous, both to the Colonel and all who saw her, her thoughts were not of himself but of the girl that traveled ahead, the girl who thought her Mother left her alone.
He pursed his lips and breathed in then out, in then out as he took the radio and clasped in between his hands.
“Good God, will this ever be over?” King mumbled as he nestled his head against the fold of his arms.
“Moshe to Aaron, Moshe to Aaron I need you to check in, now…It’s important” The finger snapped off the button and the static crackled loudly, The Colonel did not forget the warning of spies and made the message all the more desperate.
“Aaron to Moshe, I can hear you – Is anything wrong, Sir?” The Haitian coughed from the other side. JFranklin-King was almost at his wit’s end, Abre Rouge was four days away and this hard, hard truth weighed heavy on him.
“Aaron, I have a request, it’s a continuation of a request a man made to a child some twenty-three years ago. Ghosts have come back to haunt us, there’s a threat to us all, though I’m sure they don’t intend to be” The Commander was slow in his deliberation, drenching every word with the most cautious monotone voice.
“I never thought that would end Sir? Regarding the circumstances” There was the longest pause before Emile made his own slow reply.
“Well, circumstances have just got worse, My French is broken and in no way fluent but to admit this any other way would endanger everyone. I can’t have that” Franklin-King added gravely.
“Bien Sur – Of Course” Emile clasped a hand over his scalp in dread and he was flummoxed with what the Colonel conversed in the Haitian’s native tongue.
King was as he said he was, doubtful in the accented words, the confusion of masculine/feminine vocabulary, he paused a great deal over a matter of a couple of sentences. Once he finished there was a loud exhale like he was trying to choke back fear.
“Cela ne Peut pas etre – c’est incroyable” ‘that can’t be – that’s incredible
The Lieutenant Colonel was shaken from his stupor of partial sleep, when the mind doesn’t entirely register all that goes on once one just awakens.
“Incroyable…Mais Vrai” King grumbled, rubbing his head and wanting his retirement back so badly but it was far too late and he knew it.
“What do you want me to do?” The Lieutenant Colonel hushed while he turned to face the tree that his ward slept beside the slumber being her only escape from the constant, endless danger.
“Do what you always have done, be her shadow – I knew her father, her real father and Dimitri was no fool. He trusted Glenn Wyatt so in turn I will trust you. The last Ember will not be used by either side, is that understood?” Jeremiah commanded as he peeked beyond the broken window and gazed at the shadowed Greenhorn mountain way out on a Navy-colored horizon.
“Perfectly, Colonel” The Haitian remarked with a growl of determination in his voice.
“Good luck Cazeau, signing off…” With that he pushed down the Antenna and threw the radio on a rusting tire rim, it made a loud clang and some refugees did stir but King didn’t mind that.
He needed these people to see a guarding presence, a symbol of order that could help ease them for a while, calming them enough to sleep. The Colonel couldn’t do much at the moment but if he could do that then he was satisfied, a soldier remained a soldier even when the gun was downed.
✽ ✽ ✽
Fifty-three-year old Magdalena Marr was tickled by the idea of the world’s monarchs almost always having a balcony. No matter what estate, no matter the architecture they almost always had a balcony, it was their platform, their stage, their Florentine, Michelangelo-Man-pressing-his finger-to-God’s moment
In the last century they tried so badly to be like everyone else, be more approachable, likable and yet everything had to be the perfect press opportunity, the clothes, the hair, the interactions. Magda saw this as complete folly, what did they need all that when that had that wide balcony…Like she did?
On the Commissioner’s balcony the world was below her, she could see everything and nothing could be hidden from her.
That kind of power was so subtle and so irresistible, why on earth would any Royal need anything else – The people’s validation?
“What a waste of time” Magda chuckled to herself while she gleaned her hands across the smooth masonry.
How could they deceive themselves so? The world would go on as they commanded, for instance – The army of Antioch were busy preparing for the long journey to the North, their horses and battered jeeps packed and ready to go.
But that wasn’t what the Commissioner was staring at for in the middle of the square was a cavalry of up to a dozen Frisian horses, their manes laced tightly with strips of leather, their harness plated with an etching of a giant Drachma. The uniforms, their coats were all a ghostly charcoal grey, the reaper’s shade some would call it.
“Your eminence, the brigade is about to embark” A man dressed in a black tunic and grey pants walked up behind her.
“Captain Mikael, has the package been delivered?” She turned around slowly and clasped her hands together.
“…Along with our warmest regards, ma’am” Replied the stone-faced Captain of the Guard.
“Well then, Godspeed good sir – You are to be your own judge in enacting punishment for Abre Rouge’s…Treachery, I’d like Hidalgo alive but I’ll be contented if the request is not possible – Kill the Apostate” She ordered soberly
“His sedition is the worst crime of all and Lowry’s judgement will be done or the heavens fall” He saluted his superior and stayed in that stance until Magdalena addressed him.
“Or indeed the heavens fall, Captain” She nodded before watching him leave, her power made her feel like a giant.
She could have been impatiently calculating how long the Dragoons would take getting all the way up to the French-American haven. The refugees would be long settled by the Knights’ arrival but she had a trick up her sleeve, because of course she did.
“So, it begins…” Magda chuckled to herself.
✽ ✽ ✽
The crystal-clear vision of hindsight told the Colonel that going through Sequoia National Park was a bad idea… The rain from the previous might made him seek more shelter and the only viable option was the forest.
Not necessarily vast but just enough cover for the amount of people that needed it’s protection, how was he to know that World War Two tactics would be involved by the enemy?
He wasn’t even looking around for anything suspect, he was checking his panorama for Estefania, hoping there would be no Guerrilla fighters with her. It had been three days and still the warning lingered
‘Spies are everywhere’
And why wouldn’t there be? JeremiaFranklin-King had lost count how many refugees there actually were. What spies did she mean anywy, Vatican Spies, Antioch spies, Mercenaries, Rogues from El Sangre?? These questions were sure to drive him mad if it were not for the eerie silence of the climate
He couldn’t hear the tap of the woodpecker, or the odd coyote, or even the short song of a blackbird and he didn’t like it, not one bit. What was worse was that the Colonel could sense he was being watched somewhere at the top of the winding road.
“Stop the car” He said swiftly as bulging, wary eyes leered at the windshield towards the thicket that was nine or ten yards away.
Leaning on his driver’s shoulder 6666 took a rifle from the back and checked the barrels. He hurried a couple of bullets from the square packaging on the dashboard and stuffed them in his jacket pocket.
“Cut the engine” King Murmured
“Sir, I don’t think that’s a good idea” Jonah stammered as the weight of caution was letting itself be known, a little later than it should have done.
“Shut it…Off Murrow, and grab your damn rifle” The Colonel ordered, the warrant officer waited until his EXO had vacated the jeep, sighing into the curvature of the steering wheel he turned the key off and climbed out of his seat.
Those that stayed at the Colonel’s side did as they were trained to do, soldiers that blended in with the mass exodus, only reappearing when they had to. He saw half a dozen men and women crouch down and make tactical stances. Hardly a sound between them except for the very gentle rattle of a metal barrel against a soldier’s uniform.
These sudden bursts of movement from the remnant of New Rome’s army could not possibly go unnoticed by the crowd.
There were only murmurings at first but echoes of confusion would soon gather momentum so both men knew there wasn’t much of a window. The Colonel stretched a long arm across his left side to bar civilians from advancing any further and hinted to Jonah who was leaning against the hood of the car.
King lowered his rifle then pointed back to the soldiers behind him, pointed to the brush and silently curved his hand like a binocular lens. The group all looked up then glanced back at the signal every soldier dreaded, the commander clasped his wrist.
A ripple of cusses swept through the crowd like the lightest breeze, Jonah fixed his rifle against his chest and quietly swiped his fist forward and he led the scouting party three or four yards ahead.
Raising his fist made everyone pause, then spreading his two fingers apart he and his soldiers crouched into a V formation. The air was as heavy as granite, the suspense made the fair clime suddenly turn tropical.
Nobody heard the first shot, the familiar pop of a bullet being fired started as a whistle and found it’s way through the human shield into the chest of a civilian, then another, then another, then a soldier, then into the bright light of the jeep.
“OFF THE ROAD, everyone off the road!!”
The Colonel roared as he fired three rounds into the foliage.
There was one odd soldier with a semi-automatic, it made the masses scatter quicker, more manically and panicked.
The jeep was slowly being shot to pieces, the trees around them were being splintered and drilled into by bullets. Women and children started screaming, Jeremiah starting snaking towards his rifle and shot, one two, then loaded up again.
“Go, Jonah, go!” The Colonel roared again,
The clatter of a machine-gun echoed along the road, Jonah lunged down the asphalted path along with the soldiers of the battle formation, their enemy revealed themselves in their thuggish, soulless glory…Mercenaries of course.
Tattered clothes, dirtied faces, armed to the teeth the worst sons of James Madison ‘Jimmies’, not only gun nuts but gun nuts that were paid – by Antioch most likely.
Bullets flew, soldiers fought and the people ran everywhere, Donovan Lowry was a mile behind it all but knew something was wrong by the wave of people turning towards his direction. Upon looking for answers he found the hysterical as well as the dying, the sight of a gunshot would make his soul slip out and look from above.
He didn’t feel connected to the moment at all, as if witnessing the assassination of a figurehead prepared him for a repeat of such violence. Donovan was at a loss to the why he was resigned to it already.
He found a Mother with her sons frozen to the spot; he grabbed her hand long before she could even register him.
“Father, God help us, an ambush! We’ll all be killed!” She shrieked.
“By who…?” He coughed
“Mercenaries, bastard mercenaries – I don’t mean to swear father but Jesus, they have us pinned down!!” The tall brunette cowed and she squirmed away to the side of the road with her sons.
The priest ran further up the road only to see half a dozen people mowed down like skittles in a bowling lane, blood splatter eventually landed on his forehead and cheek.
“No!!! No – these are God’s children; WE ARE ALL GOD’S CHILDREN!”
He yelled at no one in particular, he ran and ran up the road while the injured turned back. Two names came into his consciousness, one he pushed back, the other he sang out like a mantra.
“Colonel! Colonel King...Colonel King!!!” The Clergyman hollered, frantic and dizzy with looking at those faces, so many faces of those suffering.
He eventually found the Commander sitting against a tree stump, blood seeping from his shoulder, drool, sweat and dirt masking his face.
“My God, let me help you – you need help”
The young man murmured, the Soldier was dazed but not enough to be incoherent, he rolled his eyes and wheezed.
“You remember who iodinated those ripped stitches on your back don’t you? Technically I am the help” The medic remarked curtly.
“Not today you’re not so where is she?” Donovan panted as he tried to stem the blood before ripping off his collar.
The Doctor cocked his head and raised an eyebrow, the guesswork that went over and over in his head was a distraction for the pain. The beauty’s puzzle of life and love coming to get her in the tiniest of moments.
Jeremiah also noted how fiercely the priest tugged the linen shackle off his neck and wondered how much he stifled the idea of release, of liberation, if indeed Donovan Lowry felt it at all.
“We halved the exodus, parted ways just after Alexander – She’s with Emile along with five hundred people, headed for Abre Rouge – Donovan, I’ve been shot, you must fight”
The Colonel pleaded quietly.
The medic’s eyes followed him as the religious refugee sank back and shook his head, licking dry lips after doing so.
“I’m a man of the cloth, to choose war now is to ignore His teachings, my vows?”
The padre stammered.
“Fine, we can die here, all of us but I see your reasons for living, I see it as clearly as the gun I hold in my hand and it’s got nothing to do with God”
The Colonel scorned as flashes of cynicism stuck in King’s craw, like all military leaders at one time or another.
It was their prerogative and Donovan silently accepted it but added a sliver of defiance and a clue of how he was dealing with his feelings.
“Hasn’t it? God works in mysterious ways, my mystery appears to be Cristobelle Hidalgo I don’t know why”
He shrugged, stone-faced and sober with his answer.
“Does there ever need to be a reason…To love someone?” The Colonel challenged him.
And there it was, a cold truth in black and white in the middle of such carnage – Donovan was no fool for he knew perfectly well why the Colonel threw down the gauntlet and actually say the L word. He was asking a question about mortality, to die for the sanctimony of the priesthood or to live and fight just to see Christy’s face again?
The priest took a deep breath and picked up a discarded pistol and ran ahead.
✽ ✽ ✽
I admit, I felt vulnerable when the masses broke up, few numbers meant an awareness of who was leading who and here’s me thinking anonymity was the name of the game – somebody obviously forgot to tell me about the rule change. I felt alone despite being surrounded by my squadron and the refugees and my ever stead-fast Haitian not far ahead of me.
I have a new fear which I have neglected to tell anyone, summer newborn was the perfect place to be amidst nature as the splendor of her gifts. But I didn’t want her gifts, no one item.
Not the flowers, not the rivers nor the cooling canopy of trees. The truth was that I feared and loathed forests, the last time we took in the scenery at the pace a good man died, the best of men that I will probably ever know taken, stolen, murdered.
Sadness sharpens a weapon against my heart like it always does and I worry about flashbacks and PTSD as echoes of gunshots drift into my ears.
My horses twitch their ears and I wonder if I’m imagining things but the confused expressions spread around my refugee caravan like a virus and then I realize that it’s real, not only it is real but it sounds as if it’s coming from far behind me.
