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About The Memory of Death Book 1 Part 1 by Brenda Carroll

The Memory of Death is the beginning of an epic fantasy series. There is one protagonist and three secondary protagonists. The story is told as seen from their eyes. The other characters including the antagonists also tell their points of view from time to time.
The Protagonist is Mark Andrew Ramsay. He is an eight-hundred-year-old Knight of Christ and the Assassin/Alchemist for the Order of the Red Cross of Gold, poor Knights of Solomon’s Temple. As one of twelve members of the ruling Council of Twelve, he has been given two mysteries and the ability to live a semi-immortal life. He and his ten Brothers of the Order generally answer to their Grand Master and he has connections with the Holy See (Vatican/Pope) but answers only to God by way of an ancient covenant.
The Knights and their apprentices are bound by their vows to abide by the Primitive Rule of Order, to uphold their duties as required by their Divine Mysteries and to participate behind the scenes in world affairs as much as possible on the side of right until Armageddon when they will fight with the Creator’s Armies against the Powers of Evil.
Meanwhile, life has gone pretty smoothly from conflict to conflict for the Knights and their clandestine army of Templars. Between wars, Sir Ramsay, lives in his native Scotland, where he trains his apprentice in the arts of alchemy and makes gold to support the Templar army. When he is called upon his other mission as Assassin is when he gets into the most trouble.
Although he does assassinate people who need to be assassinated, he also holds something called the Key of Death. His sword is made of a golden material supposedly wrought by the angels. When one of his fallen Brothers needs to be released from his “broken” body, Brother Ramsay has to do the deed. This is where the word “semi-immortal” comes in. The Brothers may retain their health and heal from normal injuries that might kill a mortal, such as bullet wounds, stabs, drowning, suffocating, starving, hanging, and any number of things too gruesome to list. However, if they lose an extremity, suffer a severed spinal cord, lose a vital organ (heart, brain, liver, etc) or cannot keep their heads on their necks, the Assassin must remove their mystery and hold it in his own head until he can pass it on to their replacement.
In 1999 CE things are going pretty well for the Order. There are no major world conflicts but only terrorist actions, religious persecution in some countries and a few other matters of concern for them to contend with. The Knights are busy doing secondary jobs at their headquarters or offices in London or like Ramsay they are working on other things.
But in the Spring of 1999, the Grand Master’s Apprentice deserts the Order and runs away, but the Order is a lifelong commitment. Especially, if you have been trained from boyhood to become an officer or an Apprentice to one of the Knights.
The Apprentice falls in with a nefarious woman who is the High Priestess of an Order called the Order of the Rose. It is more like a secret society that studies history, especially the Crusades and particularly the Templars. She learns far too much from the hapless Apprentice and soon concocts a plan to force the Grand Master to bestow the Tree of Life, immortality, on her. The Apprentice tells her about the Council of Twelve and she promises to protect him from the Assassin who would surely come after him.
One of the secondary protagonizes is a young woman named Meredith with whom the woman has lived for several years. Meredith has lived a very protected life since her parents died and left her a very wealthy child.
The Grand Master soon learns where his Apprentice is hiding out and sends Sir Ramsay to bring him home, dead or alive. The high priestess, Cecile Valentino, intercepts him along the way and her body guard douses him with an incomplete Tree of Life elixer made from a partial recipe the Apprentice has given her. It doesn’t kill him but makes him lose his memory. Valentino tries to make him give up his mysteries, but he does not remember them. He does not remember who he is, what he is or why he is in the middle of Texas being held prisoner by people he does not know.
Cecile has already gotten rid of the Apprentice and promised Meredith that a very special immortal Knight was coming from Europe. She has promised to help Meredith get pregnant so she can have the baby she has wanted for years, but Cecile does not really intend to carry through on her promise.
While Cecile is trying to pry the whereabouts of the Grand Master from Ramsay, Meredith takes it upon herself to make her dream of a child come true and she has no problem convincing Mark to break a number of his vows with her. Unfortunately, before he can regain his memory completely, he begins to fall in love with her. Something that is strictly forbidden by the Templar Rule of Order. Knights are required to avoid the company of women and they are not allowed to have families.
His Grand Master and Brothers of the Order learn what has happened to him. Three of them are sent to bring him back, and like the Apprentice, alive or dead. The only problem is they will have to subdue him, make him transfer his mystery to one of them and then cut off his head if he has truly become a deserter. That is all well and good, but two of the Brothers on the mission are his long-time friends and only one wants to see him dead.
The extraction team do not properly assess the situation and when fate intervenes, their plans to rescue Ramsay backfire.
Another three Templars along with the Grand Master end up making the trip to America when it appears that Miss Valentino has managed to imprison six Templars, five of them Knights of the Council of Twelve. In order to secure the release of his people, he uses his own Divine Mystery to trick Valentino, but things go terribly wrong.

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