Florian's Gate

by T. Davis Bunn

  “Gregor told me a little about this place while you were meeting with your mystery man,” Katya told him. “He said it once belonged to an adviser to the king. After the Soviets installed the Communist regime it became an institute.”

  The closer they came to the palace, the more cracked and faded became the building’s exterior. “An institute? For some disease, you mean?”

  Katya shook her head. “Bunnies.”

  “What, raising rabbits for labs?”

  “No, just to study.” She smiled at him. “The National Communist Institute for Bunny Research.”

  “In a palace?”

  “Don’t expect Communism to make sense, Jeffrey. It will drive you to madness trying to apply logic to an illogical system. Just accept it. The former palace of a royal adviser is now a bunny farm.”

  “That’s incredible.”

  “There were a lot of incredibles under Communism.” Katya was no longer smiling. “The count who lived here was exiled to Siberia, and his children fled to Paris with the family jewels sewn into their clothes.”

  “But they could come back and reclaim the place now, isn’t that right?”

  “Gregor said they wouldn’t because the government wants them to pay a maintenance fee for the past forty years, and they can’t afford it. So I imagine it’s like most other unclaimed properties. There’s no for-sale sign out, but it’s available for the right price. With the situation Poland is facing economically, they’d sell just about anything if the price was right.”

  The director appeared at the front door, a stocky woman in her early fifties, her hair chopped short and left in unnoticed disarray. She was dressed in clunky shoes and the inevitable white lab coat of authority. Behind stern square glasses, her eyes were intelligent, direct, impatient.

  “This palace was built in the second half of the nineteenth century in the Italian style,” she explained through Katya. Jeffrey listened and looked around as she led them into the upstairs foyer. Its mirrored ceiling, supported by interlaced girders, supported one of the largest chandeliers he had ever seen—perhaps eighteen feet high. The floors were inlaid with an intricately repeated Rococo pattern.

  “It’s all new,” she told them. “Everything. The chandelier was brought in three years ago, before the Communists held a major function here. It is supposed to be a replica of the original.

  “After the Nazis were driven from Poland and the Soviets took control,” she went on, “the palace was repeatedly sacked by soldiers, the new Communist government, and by locals. Everything was taken. The floor and the marble fireplaces were chopped up and carried off. Afterward the government gave it to the institute because no one else wanted it. The palace was nothing more than a hollow shell. A bomb could not have done more damage.”

  “There must be a lot of money in bunnies,” Jeffrey said, working to keep a straight face.

  “I am not going to translate that, and you behave,” Katya said sharply.

  “Little by little we have repaired things,” the woman continued. “We found good tenants to take over a series of rooms, and charged them a deposit large enough to make the initial repairs to that section. We arranged with the woodworking department of the local university to send up their best students. An office for the government agency responsible for lumber is here, and they made sure we could find enough wood. We fought our way through red tape for several grants from the government’s historical society.”

  She led them through vast double doors into a formal parlor with a twenty-foot-high vaulted ceiling and rosewood floor. “Nine months ago we began work on the palace’s final wing, and discovered a section of the cellar that the looters had missed. It was not surprising, really. In our own initial survey we missed it also. The door was more or less buried underneath a layer of soot, and was directly behind the old palace furnace. We found it only because we finally had enough money to repair the heating system.”

  Before Jeffrey stood a set of eight matching caquetoire, sixteenth-century Renaissance chairs. Originally of French design, they were also known as ‘gossip chairs,’ and had seats broad enough to accommodate a matron’s multi-layered skirts. The legs were delicately turned, the armrests and connecting rails carved with lunettes—repetitive motifs in a semicircular pattern. The chairs’ back panels were carved with Romayne work—oval-shaped portraits, probably of the original count who had ordered the chairs—depicting a stern-faced patriarch dressed in a Roman helmet.

  “These are fantastic,” Jeffrey said, kneeling before one after the other. “A major find.”

  “Yes, that is what we were supposed to think,” the director agreed.

  Jeffrey looked up. “What does she mean by that?”

  “When we found them, we were naturally ecstatic,” the woman explained through Katya. “But we wondered. Were they considered too old-fashioned and just stored away in a back room and simply forgotten? It was logical. But even someone such as I who knows nothing of antiques could see that they were of value. So why were they placed in a room with a door blocked and hidden?”

  She walked to the side doors, opened them, said, “So we brought them out and began digging. And we found this.”

  Slowly Jeffrey rose and walked over. The doors opened into a small parlor, now set up as a conference room. The central table was intended to seat around twenty people, but all the chairs were gathered to one side. The long table was covered with green felt, and on its surface was displayed a complete formal dinner service.

  “I imagine it was the most valuable item in the house besides the jewels,” the woman said. “But far too heavy for anyone to escape with. It was packed in four great chests.”

  The plates, the serving dishes, and the silverware were all gilded. Gilding was accomplished by mixing a very fine gold dust with another substance that would make it adhere to a surface. Originally honey was used, then a century later an amalgam of mercury was substituted. While the mercury resulted in a finer and more consistent pattern, it was also highly poisonous, causing first sterility and later death. Apprentices to the gilders were encouraged to have children while still quite young.

  The dishes were unadorned save for an embossed family shield. Jeffrey picked up one plate, turned it over, read, “Stuttgart, 1718.” He set it down very gingerly.

  “There are dishes for thirty and silverware for twenty-four,” Katya translated. “They must have ordered replacements in case of breakage.”

  The director stepped around the table and faced Jeffrey. “This has become more than simply an institute. We house a conference center, offices, research labs, almost a dozen companies. We have turned one set of the old farm buildings into a distribution center, and want to do the same to the other seven barns. We, the companies who are housed here, are now the largest employer in the region, and people have come to count on us. But the government has no money, the historical society has been shut down, and the work yet to be done on this building is enormous. We need a new roof. I will not bother you with the figures for roofing an entire palace, but believe me, it is very high. The electrical system is antiquated and a fire hazard. We have two telephone lines and need fifty. The garden—you have seen our garden? It is turning into a jungle.

  “The village school had a wall cave in two weeks ago, and now they are using the old palace greenhouses. They have no heat or running water, concrete floors, and lighting by an extension cord strung over from the main house. When we talk to the government we are rewarded with a lot of hand-waving and replies that there is no money, no money for anything.”

  She plucked a straight-backed chair from the tangle by the back wall, turned it around, and sat down facing Jeffrey. “So. You know our need. And now, young sir, we shall discuss price.”

  * * *

  That afternoon the three of them—Jeffrey, Katya, and Dr. Rokovski—arrived at the Vavel Castle’s central courtyard to be met by the museum curator, a nervous portly man in his late fifties who fussed about Dr. Rokovski like a mother h
en.

  “Ah, and these must be your guests from America.” The curator’s accent was far heavier than Dr. Rokovski’s. His nervous eyes barely seemed to focus on them as he went through the formalities of bows and handshakes. “I understand you are experts in the conservation and storage of works of art.”

  Jeffrey showed momentary confusion before catching Dr. Rokovski’s frowning nod from behind the curator. “Ah, yes.”

  “Mr. Sinclair is doing a preliminary survey to see if his company might be able to assist us in updating our methods,” Dr. Rokovski covered smoothly. “This is his associate and translator, Miss Katya Nichols.”

  “Fine, fine. Well, shall I escort you down?”

  “Oh, that will be quite all right, Mr. Stanislaus. I know how busy you are. And I do know my way quite well around here.”

  That was clearly not what the curator wanted to hear. “I am sure it’s not like in the West. We have so much to learn here, and so much to do. My small staff has been so busy, working day and night just in the viewing halls. The special collections here in the West Wing, the permanent exhibitions . . . well, you can imagine, so much has been left undone in the cellars. We haven’t even cleaned properly.”

  “We all certainly understand that you have tremendous responsibilities,” Dr. Rokovski replied, and avoided further protestations by blocking the curator and ushering Jeffrey and Katya inside.

  They passed under a stone archway, walked down a narrow corridor with a high vaulted ceiling and lamps set where torches once had burned, and finally stopped before a vast oak-beamed door lashed with rusting iron bands broader than Jeffrey’s hand. Dr. Rokovski spoke to an alert guard and was given a ring containing a half dozen massive keys. He inserted a skeleton key almost a foot long and weighing over a pound, and used both hands to grind it around.

  “This is the entrance to the vaults,” he said, using his shoulder to push the door aside. “We combine modern alarm technology and video cameras with the best of ancient security.”

  They entered a small antechamber and descended down a wide spiral staircase of worn stone. He fumbled in the stairwell’s murky half light. Fluorescent lights hanging unevenly along the ceiling blinked on. A series of ancient armored doors stood sentry down a long hallway. Each had a small square window with iron grids set at eye level.

  “We call them the museum vaults now,” Rokovski said. “But as you can see their earlier purpose was quite different. I shudder to think what might have happened here centuries ago.”

  The dungeon’s air was damp and close, and smelled of nothing more sinister than cheap antiseptic cleanser and old varnish. A wall apparatus kept constant record of the temperature and humidity. Jeffrey reached into his pocket and pulled out a slip of paper. It contained the information from the latest meeting with the old painter, Mr. Henryk. He handed the paper to Rokovski. “I think this is the chamber we are looking for.”

  Rokovski examined the paper, noted the hotel’s imprint across the top, said, “This is your writing?”

  “It is.”

  He turned and walked down the hallway, checking stenciled markings against the page as he went. They passed thirty doors, fifteen to each side, before the corridor opened up into what was clearly an unused workroom.

  Dusty easels were stacked in two corners. Jars blackened with dust and old cleanser held scores of paint-smeared brushes. Floor-to-ceiling shelves built of warping plywood and covered with dust were filled to overflowing with chemicals and paints and rags and palettes and instruments whose use Jeffrey could only guess at. Set high in the wall to their right was one solitary pressed-glass window, giving meager light from the outside world. Jeffrey stood and looked up at it and wondered at the man who had called this place a haven.

  In the far end of the workshop was a pair of doors. Between them stood the sort of old wooden card files that Jeffrey remembered from his high school library. Cards were crammed in so tightly that several of the drawers could not even be closed. There were further cards scattered across the floor, all covered with illegible scrawl.

  Rokovski sighed and waved at the cards. “Our museum archives. It is shameful, nie?”

  “Looks as if you could use the consultant I’m supposed to be,” Jeffrey agreed.

  Rokovski checked the page a final time, then fumbled with his keys and inserted a slightly smaller one into the left-hand door. The door groaned open. Rokovski reached inside and switched on the single bare overhead light bulb.

  The entire room appeared to be carved from a single stone. The air was cool and stuffy. Stacked against all four walls were broad, flat wooden crates covered with dust and cobwebs.

  Rokovski held up the sheet of paper. “This is all you have?”

  Jeffrey nodded. “It is probably in this room.”

  “But all these crates are simply numbered. There’s no description on them, just on the archive card.” The art director let out a groan. “This is impossible.”

  “No it’s not,” Katya said. “You two start opening the crates, and I will start checking the numbers against the archives.”

  Rokovski stared at her. “You don’t even know what you are looking for.”

  “Something odd,” Jeffrey replied. “Something that doesn’t fit inside a museum vault.”

  “What if it is simply listed as a painting by another artist, one that does not exist?” Rokovski ran frantic fingers through his hair, gazed around the room. “Only an expert would know that the painting title is false.”

  “I don’t think someone trying to hide the painting would have done that,” Jeffrey replied. “There’s too much chance that it would have been discovered.” To Katya he said, “Look for something that doesn’t fit.”

  “I understand,” she replied. “Do you have a pen and paper?”

  Rokovski fumbled in his jacket and handed them over. “I don’t have time to spend days looking for a painting that might not exist at all.”

  “It exists,” Jeffrey replied grimly.

  “You had best hope so,” Rokovski replied, stripping off his jacket and taking it back into the workshop. “You have the most at stake.”

  Jeffrey watched him disappear, then turned in silent appeal to Katya. She smiled her encouragement. “Something odd. Don’t worry, Jeffrey. I understand.”

  * * *

  Crate after crate was dragged out into the workshop, pried open, inspected, sealed shut again, and returned to the growing stack just inside the storage room door. Soon all three of them were sneezing and coughing from the dust that grew thicker with each disturbed crate.

  Most of the crates were filled with bad portraits of arrogant-looking people, the kind of art even a close relative would prefer not to display. There were one or two passable scenes of war-time chivalry, and many paintings that were simply damaged beyond repair. Rokovski managed a few halfhearted jokes over the first few uncrated unknowns, but by the time sweat worked its way down both their faces, all attempts at humor had vanished.

  While they worked their way down one wall, Katya started on the other side, listed a dozen numbers, then began painstakingly checking the files. Jeffrey struggled not to despair; they had managed to inspect only nineteen crates in the first hour, and the room held at least four or five hundred. The only consolation was that Katya appeared to be making three times the progress they did, although Rokovski greeted her each time their paths crossed with another derisive snort. It was clear he expected to have to go back and duplicate her efforts. Jeffrey was not sure the man was wrong.

  Katya reentered the storage room chanting a number under her breath. Something in her tone made both the men look up from their labors. She fingered dozens of crates, examining the stencils. “Here. Check this one next.”

  “What for?” Jeffrey asked.

  “How nice,” interrupted Rokovski, fatigue giving rise to sarcasm. “Did you find that under ‘R’ for Rubens?”

  “No,” she replied, her poise untouched. “This number corresponds to a card lab
eled Projekty Studenckie, Akademia Sztuk Pieknych.”

  “Student projects from the Academy of Fine Arts,” Rokovski translated. “What on earth is that doing here?”

  “It seems to me,” Katya said, “that student work has no place in a museum vault. And anyone checking the inventory would open this crate last.”

  The crate was dragged out with renewed haste. Rokovski jammed the screwdriver under one corner, slipped, cursed and slammed it back into place with a vengeance. The wood creaked and complained and finally gave. Together he and Jeffrey pulled off the lid.

  The first painting they lifted out was a mediocre pastoral scene. Next came two standard still-lifes, and under that a snowy landscape with a frozen river. Jeffrey reached for the next painting, the next to the last one, and as he pulled it out his heart lurched.

  “There’s something here,” he said.

  “It’s too heavy by far,” Rokovski agreed.

  The painting was of dead hunting trophies. They turned it over, laid it flat, and saw that set into its back was a second, smaller, older frame.

  “Bingo,” Jeffrey said.

  The student painting was just large enough to allow the smaller frame to fit snugly inside. They discovered as they tried to remove it that small thin nails had been hammered through the outer frame to seal it in place, to ensure that it would not be easily inspected. Because there were no nailheads, they used the screwdriver to probe between the frames, damaging the outer frame if necessary, and breaking the nails with a sharp upward twist. When all six were broken and the inner frame free, Jeffrey found his hands were shaking.

  He turned to Rokovski, said, “You do it.”

  “With pleasure.” He reached down with trembling hands, gently separated the inner frame, and lifted out the painting.

  It was the Rubens.

  They knelt around it in silence for a long, long while. Finally Rokovski stood, moved to the workshop table, cleared off a space, and gingerly set the painting down. He walked around it, inspecting it from various angles.