“Young lady, you presume too much,” the man said through his clenched jaw. The look in his eyes instilled an irrational fear in Maddie, and her smile faded.
A pregnant silence hung in the room as the man stared down Maddie. Her fear intensified, and she felt the color rise in her cheeks. Her gaze fell back to the desktop, focusing on the ornate bear statue that stood proudly towards the front.
A gift from Brenin, she recalled.
For some reason, that thought settled her emotions. Her fear transformed into anger.
Brenin. What is he doing to the Order?... To us? Maddie’s anger turned to outrage.
She was about to challenge the rat-faced man when she saw her father’s hand out of the corner of her eye. It was on his knee, clenching and unclenching in obvious distress. She looked over at her dad. His eyes were locked on her.
He knows. He knows that I’m angry. And he is afraid!
Maddie swallowed hard and turned back towards the man sitting behind her father’s desk.
“I—I’m sorry, sir.” She forced the words out, just like she had forced her expression to become humble. “I thought you wanted me to guess your role.”
Again, she lowered her eyes demurely to the desktop in between them. It seemed to work, as the man’s angry expression softened somewhat.
“Madeleine.... Maddie. Your friends and family call you that, correct?”
Maddie nodded, keeping her eyes down.
“Can I call you Maddie?” Another nod. “OK. Good. Maddie, you need to understand that I really am your friend. Your family’s friend.”
Maddie allowed her eyes to travel upward and meet his. His confidence seemed to be restored and he regarded her with a benevolent smile.
“We’re all friends,” he repeated, “and we are all family. We are the Rosae Crucis,” he concluded, connecting the elements for Maddie’s sake. “The Order cares about all of its members. But it also cares about its security. We are a secret society, Maddie. One that has to stay secret to stay safe.”
The man reached out and grabbed a pencil from the desktop. He rolled the hexagonal writing instrument between his thumb and forefinger.
“Maddie, surely you know this. We can’t go around speaking of the Order to just anybody.” He forestalled any protest by raising his hand. “Relax. I know that you have not been talking about the Order to outsiders, Maddie.”
Something in the way he said that struck Maddie as odd. She put her finger on it a second later. The way he said that he knew...
He really did know! Has he been following me?
He continued to speak even as she deliberated, “The Order has been good to us all, and there are quite a few members of the Order in this area. It is not forbidden to speak to other Order members...”
He paused and lowered his hand to the desktop. Maddie waited for him to continue, but he just sat there regarding Maddie with an intense look.
Maddie couldn’t hold his gaze and dropped her eyes to the pencil in his hand. Back and forth, it rolled. She was staring so intently that she could see the tiny golden letters engraved in its side. Then the pencil stopped moving. Maddie looked up at the man’s face. The benevolent smile was gone. He stared at her with a stern look.
“Maddie, we have been hearing of disturbing rumors. You have been questioning Brenin. You have questioned our edicts and our beliefs. Your comments have been incendiary.”
“No!” was Maddie’s shocked response.
“I’ll save you the trouble of coming up with excuses, Maddie. I’ve discussed these disturbing findings with your father, who by the way is very surprised and disappointed at your actions. But your father and your family are valuable members of the order — so I am merely here to warn you. And to discourage any such actions going forward.”
He released the pencil and let it fall to the desktop. It rolled away from him and came to a stop against her dad’s wooden carving. The action was more effective than snapping the pencil in two.
“You boyfriend, this... Pedro. Has he been putting these ideas into your head?”
“No!”
The man smiled again. Maddie was sure that his expression was condescending.
“I’m sure you don’t mean any harm, Maddie. But you need to understand that this behavior is subversive and unacceptable.”
She met his eyes and could see the pleasure that he had derived from intimidating her father and her.
He asked a simple question “Is this understood?”
Maddie knew that she had to play along, so replied right away. “Yes. Of course.”
“Good!”
The man got up with a broad smile. She watched as her dad also got up. She followed suit as the man stepped around the desk and shook her father’s hand, leaving the room without another word to Maddie. It was as if she had ceased to exist for him.
It filled her with rage, even as it filled her father with apparent relief.
BUT MADDIE WASN’T DONE. If anything, her ire and curiosity were aroused to even higher levels. Except now she understood that she had to be more careful.
She would bide her time for now.
She laid low for a few weeks, performing her tasks at the farm, attending the farmers’ markets, and bantering back and forth with her brother and parents like in times of old. Underneath that level of normalcy, she watched and waited. She saw her parents’ guard drop almost immediately.
However, she knew that it wasn’t her parents that she needed to worry about. Somewhere out there was an Order snitch. So, she was on her best behaviour whenever other members of the Order were around. It made her sick, this display of meekness and ignorance.
Slowly, the behaviour of other Order members towards her changed. People were friendlier and more open where before they had acted somewhat reserved. It took several weeks, but Maddie finally felt that she had convinced whoever had turned her in that she was harmless — while deep down inside she was raging in fury. Her sense that
