by Tosca Lee
We drive past a field of windmills, giant turbines blade-silent against the gray sky. I pull the envelope from the waist of my pants, clutch it in my lap, and watch windmill after windmill go by.
It takes everything I have not to reassemble my phone. To call Luka, tell him I love him—again, again, and again. But not to say I’m sorry. I’ve had a shroud of death over my head since the day I was born, but he—he has to live. There are so few things of real beauty in this world. It cannot afford to lose one more.
Nausea and dizziness roll past me, leaving me wasted in their wake. I pull the tissue from my nose, glance at the envelope. Steeling myself, I loosen the tie, take out the stack of papers.
I carefully unfold the Scion map, lay it out on the seat beside me. And that’s what it is: a map of the organization through the ages, the chronicle of its power. The circles toward the bottom of the expanding tree are mostly blank, some of them filled only with the name of a financial institution, a government agency, or a surname. I don’t know how this information was collected, or how reliable it is. Can only imagine the cost of adding even one name to its morbid genealogy.
The lineage of the hunted on the other side is far more tragically complete. There’s a pen clipped to the seatback in front of me. I take it and carefully fill in the name of my mother’s killer:
Nikola, so-called Prince of Budapest. Traitor.
Though it may end up in Nikola’s hands, it will at least show the truth.
I turn my attention to the rest of the assortment on my lap: several pages, worn and folded, my name written on one side. I unfold and smooth them out. Notes, penned in Hungarian, the English translation added more recently in the margins:
Trial documents sealed by Habsburg court—discovered by Jesuit priest 1720s
Thurzo wife multiple visits to E. 1612. steals E.’s jewelry each time (payment???)
E. daughter Katalin visit—living at Keresztur? at time
2 weeks before E. dies, priests Andras Kerpelich and Imre Agriensy come to witness will from Esztergom bishopric
Buried Cachtice—NOT removed to Nyirbator.
Lamosz Cemetery Budapest? No—no longer exists
Trnava, Slovakia
I gather that these are the details of Elizabeth’s visitors as she lived walled up in darkness. The potential burial site of her body, which as far as I read was never found.
This isn’t my handwriting—whose notes are these?
I flip through page after page like this, translations of the original notes written from the margins into the corners in thick, broad curves, and feverishly across the back. At least I wasn’t the only one seemingly obsessed.
The last three pages are penned in the same hand, their rushed and sprawling lines solely in English.
Audra, my heart, my love . . .
This is a letter addressed to me. I rifle to the last page.
It is signed “Amerie.”
These pages, like the others, were written by my mother.
I read with shaking hands.
Audra, my heart, my love . . .
How do you put a lifetime on a page?
The day you were born I felt more alive than I had ever been before. On the day that you look into your own child’s eyes, you will understand what I am saying: that I saw the face of God.
I had never known such love, such gratitude and humility, as the moment I held you. Such purpose, and fire, as the instant I let you go. Determination to change the future that pulled us apart.
In another life, I would have told you stories about your grandmother and made you dumplings, which are the only thing I ever learned to cook. I would have held you every night until you would no longer let me. We would have laughed and sung songs and played hide-and-seek. And I would have left you treasures as my own mother did when I was old enough to find them.
I would have told you everything I knew about your father, whose name was Tamas Vargha. The most noble man I ever met.
We would have fought, I am sure, over your independence, which I would have been fearful to grant you. Wanting to protect you, which I think, aside from love, must be the biggest instinct a mother has.
I did not know my own mother until I was the age you are now as I write this—eighteen. I knew her only a year before she was taken. I see her face before me every day, trace the faint lines of her mouth with the finger of my mind. I have always been like that, never forgetting anything I have seen, and so the image of your face—dangerously provided too few times throughout your life by a mutual friend—has always been in front of me. You are beautiful.
I hoped that we would begin a new life together one day. I will hold out hope until my dying breath, but you should know I have sworn to leave the Scions nothing. Having stolen you from my life, they will not benefit from its memory.
Maybe you resent me or even hate me for the fact that I had to leave you. Or maybe you have some vision of me greater than anything I can live up to. Nothing you do or have done or are could possibly fall short of my vision of you. You were perfect when you were born. You are perfect to me now. Perfect, even in your mistakes. Nothing—not even you—would ever convince me otherwise.
I seal this letter with several notes and hope I have time to give them to Imre. He knows to give them to you, and will not dare to look at them in order to protect them. You are too old by now for songs and I cannot hold you. But I leave treasure for you. Find it. Live. Let my life’s work be my humble offering for all the years I could not be the mother I hoped to you.
I love you, Audra, and will have many things to say to God about my loss of you. But many more to say for the gift of you.
Amerie . . . Mother
It is dated three years ago.
I read the pages again and again, searching every word for the cadence of her voice. Aching to hear it.
At last I cover my face out of sight of the driver, and sob.
* * *
We are fifty kilometers from the outskirts of Budapest by the time I fold her letter away and look again at her soaring notes. Churches, some of their names scored out. Names of people and estates written at various angles across the page where she ran out of space. The names of those who visited Elizabeth in her imprisonment, and took her last confession.
The next things in the stack are little pieces of paper like the kind you tear off a cube. I recognize Luka’s handwriting across all three of them, their lines short—the kinds of notes you leave on a countertop, on a refrigerator, or by a bedside.
I love you, Princess.
—L
Do you know how beautiful you are?
—L
One more day. I’ll be the man waiting at the altar.
—L
I stare, frozen, at the last note in my hand.
The paper beneath it is a marriage certificate.
37
* * *
I’m married.
I glance at the date on the certificate: September 24. Last year.
Why didn’t he say anything? Why, when he saw the ring on my finger and I thought we were only engaged?
Because as far as he knew, I had seen everything in the vault. And then I deserted him on the plane.
I fumble for the phone, power it back on, and pray it still has a charge. When it comes to life, the screen floods with text messages and voice mails. I dial Luka’s number. He does not pick up.
No. Of course he doesn’t. With any luck he’s on his way to Liverpool. But I know he would never have willingly stayed on that plane without me, would have fought to follow me. In which case at least he doesn’t know where I am or what I’m about to do.
I page through Luka’s texts, sick at heart.
Where are you?
Audra, don’t do this.
Please. I can’t lose you again.
Audra?
I love you.
His voice mails are the same.
Don’t do this. I love you. I can’t lose you.
But I
am the one who cannot lose him.
And I have no intention of dying.
“Excuse me,” I say to the driver. “I need to make a stop.”
The next call I make is to Claudia.
38
* * *
The numbered gate on Csónak Street is painted like that of any residence below Castle Hill on the hilly Buda side of the Danube. It is by now nearly 11:00 P.M. The street is quiet, only the occasional car or biker passing by.
I step into the light of the lone bulb positioned at the top of the old stone arch and glance straight up at the camera. Ignoring the intercom, I pull off my wig and shades.
A moment later, the gate audibly unlocks. I push it open, step into the tiny overgrown courtyard, and reach the front stoop just as the door opens.
A diminutive man in a sharp tuxedo opens the door and gestures me in. A mask with a curved, beaklike nose obscures the upper half of his face.
Of course.
He doesn’t speak as he escorts me through the foyer to the back of the house and down two flights of stairs to a small chamber that widens into a broad tunnel. Nor do I ask where he is taking me as I follow him through a series of corridors lit by a string of electric lights, past grottoes with multiple exits in the ancient subterranean maze.
By the time we arrive in a cavern shored up with ancient brick, I can hear the drum of that industrial drone. Can sense the Utod gathered in this underground hive.
Trilling laughter echoes from a neighboring tunnel that glows like a great yellow eye. A second later a woman trips into the cavern as a man catches up to her, gold rings gleaming on his fingers. She’s short-skirted Baroque, down to her creamy stockings and bow-tied boots. A second woman in a powdered wig stumbles out of the passage after them, skeletal teeth glowing faintly on red-rouged lips. There’s an air of richness about all three of them, as though this were the truest noble court, the one in Zagreb a thrift-store imitation. But they fall silent the moment they see me: unmasked in the cargo pants and shirt I’ve worn since yesterday. I feel the heat of their eyes on my back as the butler leads me away.
By the time we reach a corridor lined on either side by stone pillars topped with rough-hewn heads, I am certain I am in chambers as old as the earth itself.
The sentinels are replaced farther down with human versions robed in black. Their white masks hover in the shadows between electric torches, seem to float without bodies at all. At the end of the corridor: a carved double door attended by two robed figures, white faces turned toward me in frightening uniformity. It is the same featureless mask and robe Nikola wore to court in Zagreb, a thing of nightmares, multiplied as though by mirrors. They are so still I wonder if they even breathe . . . until I see the eyes of one follow me.
My skin crawls as I move past them.
Not all of them are Utod.
The white-faced forms swivel inward as I pass. The last two open the doors. I walk directly into the chamber—and the presence of Nikola.
He stops me, five steps in, with a lifted palm. And I see the round voice box set in the mouth of his vacant mask. But he is not alone.
A robed figure lights a candelabra on a narrow altar behind him along the wall. The massive top half of a face protrudes from the stone above it, the forehead obscured by a primitive crown. The carved lids of the eyes suggest a squint, but their stone sockets are empty.
If there are cameras in this court, they are not kept here; there is no hint of modernity in the room and, other than the altar, no furniture.
“Did you know . . .” the figure at the altar begins, startling me.
It is a woman.
She’s also common. She moves elegantly from one taper to the next, fingers encased in black gloves.
“That long before these caverns became shelters and prisons . . . they were a hunting ground? In a time when that was all there was. Hunters. Hunted.” She sets the last taper in its cradle and turns toward me as Nikola moves aside. “And now here we stand, millennia later, you and I.”
She’s not just common.
She’s a hunter.
Don’t trust Nikola. He’s in league with them.
Do the revelers in the tunnels outside have even the slightest idea? How much arrogance does it take for a prince to host hunters within his own court?
And how much deceit?
“I have what you want,” I say.
“I’m glad,” she says. “I’m so pleased you’re here, Audra.” Her English is perfect, with only the barest hint of an accent.
“I’m sorry, have we met?”
“Only in the broadest sense.” Her eyes lift. They are pale, nearly amber. “Though I feel I know so much about you. So very much, from so many sources, so few of them firsthand. Ivan, of course, most recently.”
I blink.
And then I realize that this can be only one person.
The Historian . . .
Is a chick.
My mind revolts. The Historian, a woman? What kind of irony—and twisted misogyny—is that?
“You’re surprised,” she says mildly.
“I thought you’d be taller.”
My thoughts, meanwhile, have careened from order. Thinking I’d be meeting Nikola, I was prepared to hand over a single item: half of the Scions’ map. The other half is with Piotrek, to be delivered to a location for pickup once Claudia reports I have arrived at a pub on Kazinczy Street alive. Preferably with some kind of guarantee that Luka will be safe wherever in the world we go.
That, at least, was the plan.
Which is all moot now.
Now any one of these robed figures could kill me—shoot, stab, strangle, garrote me on the spot—and retrieve the documents from my fading memory without ever seeing them in person.
I tamp down the rising tide of panic that threatens to take out my knees.
“I have part of what you want. I won’t receive the location of the other half until I arrive across the river, alive,” I say, making this up on the fly. “And just so you know, I haven’t seen the entire document. So I don’t know what’s on the rest.”
She steps closer. She’s a few inches taller than I am and peers down at me. “So audacious,” she inhales, as though with strange wonder. “So fearless. I see her there in your eyes.”
I recall the empty circle in the succession of Historians, drawn with crisp, new ink.
“You wouldn’t know since you came to this job after Nikola killed her,” I say, lips curled back from my teeth.
“Clever girl,” she says and holds out her hand.
I pull the folded paper from my pocket. Slap it into her palm.
She doesn’t even bother looking at it but walks directly to the candelabra and holds it over the nearest taper. I gasp and lunge for it, but Nikola is on me in an instant.
“Where’s Ana?” I hiss.
“I’m sure she’ll turn up. Somewhere,” he says, the electronic voice sinister. And even though I squeeze my eyes shut, I can’t block out the vision of her floating, like a pale Ophelia, in an eddy of the Danube.
I lash out with an elbow, crack him hard across the chin. His head snaps back, the mask slips up his face.
I falter at the sight of that nose, the unremarkable mouth. The line of that jaw.
I don’t need to see his eyes to recognize his face.
Goran. The monk from Cres island.
Ivan’s death. The monastery where the monks came from to retrieve whatever items Ivan left beneath the statue of Saint Anthony . . . the key to the box only I could open. Each thought slots into place in quick succession as Nikola pins me to the ground.
Never mind that he’s got sixty pounds on me; the breath got knocked from me before I found myself cheek to cheek with the floor.
“Is anything you said to me the truth?” The story about my mother? The rain—her regret and her love for me?
But my mind has already raced both back and ahead at once. Is prepared to hate him for stripping the one memory anyone has ever giv
en me of my mother. And to believe it anyway, even if he laughs in my face.
“Did you know,” he says hotly against my ear, “that these caves once served as the prison of Vlad Tepesh—from whom Ferenc, our early father, learned the art of impaling his enemies?”
“History lessons from you? That’s torture.”
He twists my arm so far around I actually wait to hear it snap. “History teaches us who we are.”
“If the past is all you are, you better hope to God you never lose your memory!”
“You may not understand this,” he hisses, “but what I do, I do for the protection of this court. This safe haven for those who come here to remember who they are.”
“They aren’t remembering who they are!” I shout. “They’re forgetting! Or did you not notice that everyone out there is wearing a mask?”
“They are alive!”
“Yes—walled up alive, just as she was!”
He lets go. I shove myself up. And then his fist lashes out so fast it sends me sprawling.
“You’re just like her,” he spits.
My ears are ringing, two torches blazing on the wall where there had been only one. I lift my hand to my mouth, tasting blood.
“Enough, Nikola. Leave us.”
I sense more than see Nikola hesitate before striding to the door. It falls heavily shut a second later.
I stagger to my feet with a rolling wave of nausea. Try to assess the figure less than eight feet away as she casually withdraws a pistol, clicks off the safety, and sets it on the altar. My eyes drop to the weapon.
“Let’s not be primitive,” she says. “Even if you reached this pistol before me, my successor is already appointed. You would die within seconds, your memory would be harvested, and my guards would no doubt feel compelled to take out half the population here tonight. Nikola, such that he is, would no doubt find a way to survive . . . and where would that leave us?”
“You just let a man hit me and you’re talking about primitive?”
“If you were a man, would it be more acceptable?”
