He needed to clear the adversary from his head before it took hold.
Slowly he descended the spiral stone stairs, using the banister instead of his cane for balance until he reached the tiled entrance hall. The hall held two suits of armor that he’d purchased back in England, worn centuries ago by knights who were rumored to have fought alongside William Marshal in the twelfth century.
When he was a boy, he’d thought all knights were good, that they’d fought unselfishly to protect others. But he’d learned during his internment that not all of them had fought for what was good or right. Some only wanted to steal away what wasn’t theirs.
Even so, he believed in the medieval Code of Chivalry. To fear God and live by honor. To defend the weak and keep faith. To persevere in every endeavor until the end.
A heraldic flag, its fierce lion colored a dark midnight blue, hung over the armor. Autumn leaves dropped behind the animal, seeming to plummet at his roar, and a swath of grass trailed back into the distance under the shower of leaves.
Letha had designed the coat of arms for their family. It meant freedom from evil. The power of the wind. New life. It brought him great honor to hang this symbol of knighthood in his house.
Eileen, his housekeeper, waited by the front door with his trench coat and tweed hat. Long ago, she and Jack used to try to stop him from walking in the rain, but those days were past. Instead of barring the door, she dropped the coat onto his shoulders and handed over his hat.
“It’s lightning, Mr. Knight.”
“I know.”
She opened the door. “Take care.”
He breathed in rain as he hobbled toward the front gate, the moisture coating his lungs. Rain clung to the cold wind and splashed his face. He loved the thrust of power to stir the sea. Shake trees. Carry the voice of a child crying for help.
Here in the storm, tears could fall freely down his cheeks, mixing with the torrent of God’s grief falling from the sky. On days like this, he thought God must surely be crying over the destruction mankind unleashed on one another. At the sight of His children entrenched in violent bitterness and jealousy, their barbaric quest for power detached from Him.
Daniel leaned against his cane as he moved past the gatehouse, toward a grove of pine trees that battled the wind with its daggers of needles and bark.
A blissful peace had settled over England in the late 1940s and ’50s, except in the hearts of the many people trying to find loved ones they’d lost.
After the war, he and George had spent months searching for Brigitte, but they couldn’t locate her. Youth today didn’t understand a world before social media and mobile phones, before one could search the Internet for a missing person or post their picture on screens around the world. And many people—today and from years past—didn’t understand or honor faithfulness. A deep commitment to those you loved, to persevere no matter what. One didn’t just forget a lost friend.
He tightened his grasp around the knob of his cane. Every day he prayed that he wouldn’t forget her.
Wind channeled between the pine trees, like the current of a river carrying him deep into the forest.
For decades after the war, he’d returned to England to search for Brigitte on his own. George and Letha had pitied him, thinking she must surely have passed away. He knew the realities and yet something kept prompting him to look for her. That quiet, still voice that urged him forward. A voice the assailants in his mind had tried to slay.
But he’d persevered like the knights of old, searching for the lost maiden. Like he’d done back in the tree house long ago. Whenever he returned to England, he would look for her, but the longer he searched, the more it seemed as if he were searching for a specific pine needle in this island’s vast grove.
George and Letha both died in 1984. That year he hired a private investigator in London. When that search availed nothing, he hired a second company. Then a third. One of the men he’d hired had come close to finding her—or so he said—but then he’d rammed into a dead end. It had been five years since the last agency closed his file.
Some thought him eccentric to continue this search, but he didn’t care. The knight’s code was to defend, protect. Long ago, he’d promised to find Brigitte, and he would persevere in this quest until God chose to take him home.
Six months ago, he’d begun an exhaustive search for a new investigator, trying to hire a person who would make this a personal journey instead of merely a professional one. He’d wanted to hire a woman who understood English along with some German. Someone who could think differently from the agency men he’d hired in the past. Someone compassionate, smart, and who knew how to keep a secret.