Chapter Eighteen
They left Pendragon happily slurping up gooey ice cream the next morning as they drove over the Huey Long Bridge on their way to Grand Isle, the place which had once served as a warehouse for Jean Lafitte.
“So you think finding the Tarot card wasn’t just a coincidence?” Sophie asked.
Michael shook his head. “Things happen for a reason.” He glanced over at her and grinned wickedly. “For example, if Pendragon hadn’t been sent to find you, we wouldn’t have had totally mind-blowing sex last night.”
Sophie felt herself blushing. Never would she have pegged herself for being sexually adventurous or given to fantasy, but Michael’s skill with his hands and mouth—especially his mouth, tonguing all of her private places until she lay panting and begging him to stop and then, not stop—had turned her into some wanton creature who craved his touch as much as any meth addict wanted dope.
And the mind-linking was more powerful than any aphrodisiac she could imagine.
She was inside his head, could feel him inside her, could feel how he felt being inside her.
There was no distinction where she left off and he began. She fidgeted on the leather seat.
“Want me to pull over for a quickie?” Michael asked, still grinning.
“Stop reading my mind!” Sophie retorted, but couldn’t contain her own smile.
“When your shields are down, you’re fair game. Besides, I like the way you think. It inspires me to come up with more fantasy games to play.”
Her face felt like it was on fire. Michael’s imagination was boundless. Some of those positions last night—She glanced at him suspiciously. “Are you lurking again?”
“Maybe a little,” he said and then turned his attention back to the drive. “The closer we get to the islands, the stronger the energy vibes I’m picking up.”
A safer subject at the moment. “So tell me why you think the King of Swords is connected with Jean Lafitte.”
“Remember when I told you he was considered something of a kingpin with the French aristocrats?”
“Yes. Go on.”
“The suit of Swords represents power, action, force and conflict. Since most swords are double-edged, it also reflects deception, illusions, areas of uncertainty that must be met head-on. Both descriptions apply to Jean’s operations. Are you with me so far?”
Sophie smiled. “I’m getting used to the way you talk.”
“Well, sometimes the degree in Medieval Religion and Culture comes in handy,” Michael replied, quirking up a corner of his mouth.
“Anyway, the King of Swords symbolizes a man who is just, fair and wise, but also somewhat ruthless in carrying out that justice. What better description of Jean Lafitte could you have? He squelched the feuding between the native Baratarians and the encroaching East Indies pirates and built a very lucrative business. From all accounts, he shared the booty freely and his men willingly followed him. The French welcomed him into their society, even though it may have been for the luxurious goods he could provide. Even Governor Claiborne had a grudging respect for him since Jean always managed to elude him.” Michael gave her a quick look.
“And remember,” he said softly, “that the Grandmasters of the Priory were always called Jean. “
She gave him a startled look. “You think Jean Lafitte was a member of the Priory?”
“Maybe,” Michael answered with a little shrug. “That old woman left the Tarot card for us to find.”
Sophie shook her head. “I can’t believe I’m actually starting to think this all makes sense.
” She turned to look at the real world slipping by past the window.
They passed a roadside store where a somewhat worn sign advertised: “Jumbo PoBoys and Hog Head Filé with Cracklins” and smiled.
It certainly wasn’t the Café du Monde, but it was real in its own way.
She wondered what the local Cajuns would make of the story Michael told her.
As if he knew she needed time to contemplate, Michael was silent.
Sophie took in the low-lying marsh of the delta, covered with reeds and weeds, cane, and patches of water hyacinth.
Across the bayou, craggy cypresses hung out over the water, trailing Spanish moss.
It was an oddly serene setting. She cracked the window and inhaled.
Damp earth, various aromas of plant vegetation and the tang of salt air filled her nostrils while the cry of gulls and terns filled her ears.
The real world. With a sigh, she turned back to Michael.
“I still don’t understand why a twentieth-century descendant of a member of a secret order of Templars would decide to bury Excalibur on land owned by pirates who—even if they were privateers operating under a Letter of Marque from Cartegena as they claimed—still were considered criminals by the Americans? ”
“Recall your history, Sophie. The British offered Jean a lot of money and an officership in the Royal Navy for aiding them up the river, past the forts, through the swamps and into the city. Instead, Lafitte helped General Jackson defeat the British in the Battle of New Orleans even though Claiborne had a warrant out on him. The whole crew was pardoned after that. But, to answer your question,” Michael said as eased the car onto Grand Isle’s main street, “the Priory has always had warriors as well as scholars, and I think whoever was the guardian of the Sword might have seen a bit of irony in honoring someone who actually fought—and who fought not because he had to but because it was the right thing to do to protect the country he loved.” He stopped the car in front of a local bait shop.
“Just like King Arthur did. That’s the connection. ”
Sophie looked around the narrow street and across the scrubby land to cottages and a slip of blue water that was the bay. “The Sword is here?”
Michael smiled as he got out of the car. “It’s close, Sophie. Very close.”
****
“Most folks want me to take ’em past old Fort Livingston,” the old, grizzled guide said as he poled the pirogue away from the dock in Grand Isle and headed toward a narrow inlet nearly invisible in the swamp grass.
“Not that there’s anything there these days, I tell ’em.
Just oyster and salt grass and black mangroves.
A herd of wild ponies. Them pirates’ houses’re long gone, blowed away by too many hurricanes to remember.
” He looked from Michael to Sophie, a gleam shining in his black eyes as his weathered face cracked into what might have been a smile.
“Some say, though, the spirit of Lafitte walks there on certain nights. I tell ’em it’s the wind howling, or maybe the devil. ”
Sophie shuddered a little, wondering what the man would say if he knew there really were demons and dragons out there.
“Strange, though,” the man continued, “there’s been odd streaks of lightning in the sky the last couple of nights, but not a storm around.”
Sophie could practically see Michael’s ears prick up as his gaze sharpened on the guide like wanted prey.
She hoped the panther wasn’t about to make a showing and scare the man witless.
The pirogue was only a little less stable than a canoe and she really didn’t want to fall into murky water infested with snakes and gators.
But Michael kept his tone mildly interested.
“Just lightning? No thunder?”
“Nope. Least ways, not that I heard. One old woman claimed the streak looked like some kind of dragon, but old Lucy’s a bit daft in the head. Always claims to be seeing things in those cards she uses.”
“Cards?” Sophie asked.
“Yeah. The fortune-telling type. She goes into the city couple of times a week to make money off the tourists.”
Michael flashed Sophie a look and she knew he was thinking of the Tarot reader they’d seen.
She shivered slightly although the midday air was warm and humid.
Their guide poled through the narrow stream as it opened into a slightly larger bayou.
The water lay still and, for a moment, Sophie felt as though she were surrounded by a globe of bluish-green light.
It was hard to tell where the water ended and the land began.
They moved into a narrower inlet again that seemed to be criss-crossed with other streams. It was a labyrinth of swaying grasses, high enough so any horizon that might be out there couldn’t be seen.
Here and there a chêniére rose slightly above the surface, its hard white shells forming a ground of sorts for oak trees that somehow amazingly grew here.
“This here’s called ‘the tremblin’ prairie,’ ” the old man said as he turned the pirogue in yet another direction, “on account of you can’t really tell if anythin’ is solid or not.”
Sophie sincerely hoped their guide knew where he was going, since she was thoroughly confused, but now she could understand how the pirates felt safe from pursuit. The governor’s soldiers would easily have become lost.
“This is it,” the old man said as the pirogue scraped against a hard shell beach dusted lightly with sand. “Temple Island, although there ain’t nothin’ left here either.”
Michael stepped out of the boat into shallow water. Before Sophie could join him, he picked her up and carried her to the relatively dry ground a few inches above the gently lapping waves.
“My chivalrous knight,” Sophie teased and gave him a quick kiss, missing the odd look that fleetingly crossed his face.
He smiled. “No need to get your feet wet. Come on.”
Sophie followed him up the slight incline toward tall, live-oak trees that formed somewhat of a haphazard circle. She felt a slight chill slide over her as she passed between two of them and then looked up to find Michael watching her.
“You feel it too?” he asked.
“Feel what exactly?”