by Magnus Flyte
Max took his meals apart from them now, and Sarah had only passed him once in the hallway. He didn’t make eye contact.
Sarah made loud footsteps on the polished terrazzo floor as she walked down the hallway to his office. She rehearsed her speech about asking for the key, and steeled herself.
But only Jana was in the office, with Moritz panting beneath her desk. He thumped his tail at the sight of Sarah. “Are you looking for Prince Max?” Jana asked politely.
Sarah nodded. “We need the key to the library,” she explained.
“The prince is at Nelahozeves now,” Jana said. “But the phone lines are down and his mobile is turned off. I’m not sure . . .”
“Will he be there tomorrow?” Sarah asked. “I mean, is it okay if we just show up?”
Jana hesitated.
“We won’t disturb him,” Sarah promised. “But we really need the time with the archives. I promise he won’t even know we’re there.”
“I did get one message from the prince asking for his drum set,” said Jana. “Petr was going to take it in the van tomorrow. Perhaps you and Eleanor can drive the van and deliver it for us?”
Drum set, thought Sarah. That completes the picture.
“Oh, and would you take this to him?” Jana asked, handing Sarah a letter. “It came yesterday.”
Sarah looked at the envelope. It was high-quality stationery, printed with the return address of the Hotel Gritti Palace in Venice. Fancy.
“Sure,” Sarah said. It was weird how everyone assumed it was an honor to do things for aristocrats. As if they weren’t already the privileged ones.
As she was turning away, she sensed Bernard Plummer, the Rococo expert, to be close by. Once Sarah’s nose had cleared, she learned that Bernie tended to overdo it on Chanel No. 5. Beneath the massive chest beat the heart of a refined and accomplished French matron. He often brought embroidery to the dinner table.
“Oh, Sarah, some of us are going over to Old Town Square for dinner out,” Bernie said, appearing from behind a corner. “It’s Godfrey’s turn to cook and I just can’t face the offal.” Sarah nodded.
“Plus we have to plan the costume ball,” he said, as they turned into Daphne’s portrait hall. Daphne, dressed as always in her impeccable lab coat, was giving instructions to two workmen who were carrying a glass case.
“Costume ball?”
“Yes, we’re all dressing up like them.” Bernie nodded at the family portraits staring down at them. “I’ve already dibbed rights to Maria Manrique de Lara and I found an extraordinary shop where I can get ermine. Fake ermine! I love these kinds of things.”
Sarah and Bernie paused to peer over Daphne’s shoulder into the glass case. It contained a small blond, blue-eyed wax doll with pink cheeks dressed in a fancy red muumuu. The dress was trimmed with gold embroidery and sported a white lace ruff and cuffs. A cross hung from its neck.
“Somebody’s dolly?” Bernard said, pulling out a pair of glasses to inspect the needlework.
“De Infant of Prague,” Daphne corrected with a sniff.
“That’s Il Bambino di Praga?” Sarah almost laughed out loud.
“It’s a copy of course,” Daphne said, witheringly. “De original is in de Church of Our Lady Victorious.”
“Huh,” Sarah said. “What’s this one doing here?” Daphne sighed.
“Polyxena Lobkowicz vas given de original Holy Infant by her mother, Maria Manrique de Lara, who brought it here from Spain in 1555. When Polyxena’s husband Zdenek died, Polyxena gave it to de Carmelite church. This copy vas made in the 1930s, I believe. It vas found in a trunk filled vith old shoes.”
“It’s fabulous,” breathed Bernard. “Can I carry it around at the costume ball?”
“That vould be most impious,” Daphne sniffed. “It is not a toy. And I believe Dr. Volfmann has not auth
orized this costume party.”
“Oh, we have to do it,” Bernard pleaded. “I’ve already made Eleanor’s costume, and mine. Daphne, let me cook you up something. You could be Polyxena.”
Sarah thought she detected a suppressed gleam of excitement in Daphne’s eye. Even stuffy Dutch academics couldn’t resist a cht
THIRTEEN
Sarah left Daphne and Bernie and made her way to Eleanor Roland’s domain to see about hitching a ride to Nelahozeves Castle. The Ernestine portraits were housed next to the room where Douglas Sexton was working on the Carl Robert Croll watercolor collection. Nimble of finger Doug who was also cheating bastard Doug. Somewhere between Max’s tirade and the arrival of the Czech police, Sarah had noticed the wedding band on Douglas’s left hand. How had she missed that? Mentally re-creating the under-table experience, Sarah realized that Doug had pulled off the pyrotechnics with the right hand alone. Sort of like Beethoven in the famous chord sequence of Piano Sonata No. 2: the one where LVB had carefully notated the fingering in the score—something he never did—knowing full well that the only person capable of playing the passage with one hand was himself. Sarah liked to imagine Luigi holding his left hand up while ripping through the sequence, so those without a view of the keyboard could watch and be amazed. It must have been quite a turn-on for the ladies of the late eighteenth century. Sarah pictured Doug waving his chicken wing around with his left hand. Not quite the same.
Now that her sinuses were clear, she had no interest in Douglas, but it was awkward explaining the truth, so she had used his wedding band as an excuse for her change of mind. He had sulked a bit, of course, but seemed content enough with provocative banter at the dinner table.
Sarah thought of trying to sneak past Douglas on her way to Eleanor, but then thought better of it. She had been so busy with the museum work that she hadn’t had an opportunity yet to question him about the drug accusation and Sherbatsky. She turned toward his workroom.
Sarah had been at the palace long enough now to know that Douglas ranked somewhat low in the hierarchy of the experts—or, rather, the Carl Robert Croll watercolors did. The paintings gave a nice record of Lobkowicz family life in the mid-nineteenth century, but had been commissioned with no other aim than impressing the viewer with just how much stuff the family owned, and how very rich and important they all were. They didn’t have a great deal of artistic merit on their own. Unlike, say, Beethoven’s Fourth written out in the composer’s own hand. Which Sarah had touched with her own hand. Really, if you could get away from the vague feeling of dread, the fact that she had been briefly accused of stealing an eleventh-century crucifix, paranoid Max, and the still unexplained death (murder?) of Sherbatsky, it was shaping up to be a kick-ass summer.
Sarah poked her head into Doug’s room. The Crolls were in great shape, ready to be exhibited, so Douglas seemed to be mostly occupied with selecting the best ones and photographing them. Sarah suspected he was killing time, dragging out an all-expenses-paid summer in Prague away from the wifey.
“How’s it going?” Sarah asked, stepping into the room.
“Hello, love,” Douglas said. “Come and have a look.”
Sarah walked over and peered at the delicate painting on Douglas’s table. The picture was a view of a grand salon with two little girls in the foreground. Behind them, through a vaulted arch, three men were playing billiards.
“Just another Sunday in the lives of the rich and Austro-Hungarian,” said Sarah.
She leaned in closer. Even in simplified and tiny watercolor form, the Lobkowicz features were unmistakable. It could have been Max standing there in a green waistcoat, cue stick balanced jauntily on his shoulder. If Max ever got around to removing the cue stick shoved up his ass, that is.
Douglas looked down the V of Sarah’s T-shirt.
“How’s it going in your world?” he asked. “Anything interesting turn up?”
“I’m still trying to make sense of Sherbatsky’s notes,” Sarah said, with a deliberate sigh. “There are a lot of loose ends.”
“Doesn’t surprise me.” Douglas rolled his eyes and sat down on one of the
rickety wooden swivel chairs they had all been issued. “That man was a loony. No offense.”
“He could be . . . unpredictable,” Sarah agreed, sending a mental note of apology to the methodical dead professor.
“Well, it was good shit, whatever he was on,” Douglas laughed. “I thought about asking Max to hook me up, too, but who wants to deal with that punter?”
Sarah’s ears almost literally pricked up at this.
“Huh,” she said, as nonchalantly as possible. “So Max and Sherbatsky were like . . . drug buddies?” Douglas looked like he regretted his last comment, so Sarah leaned provocatively against the worktable to encourage him. “C’mon,” she said, giving Doug a good angle at her cleavage. “That sounds juicy.”
“Well,” Douglas said, scooting forward on his swivel chair to get closer to the view. “Max and Sherbatsky were always going over to Nelahozeves, and coming back looking totally wrecked. Miles and Daphne and I went over on a Sunday morning, just to picnic on the grounds, and we found Max, fully dressed, asleep in the driveway and Sherbatsky . . .” Douglas widened his eyes theatrically and slid closer to Sarah, grabbing her knees.
“Sherbatsky?” Sarah prompted, hoping to get the story before the hands got any higher.
“Miles found him on the grounds . . . by the river. Passed out cold. With a crossbow in his hands.”
“Whaaaat?!” Sarah spluttered.
“Miles demanded an explanation and you should have heard Max.” Douglas rolled his eyes. “He did the princely roar and huffed off. Miles and I carried Sherbatsky back to the castle and Max wouldn’t let us call a doctor. Locked himself in the room with the professor and told us all to bugger off.”
“You’re kidding me,” Sarah said. “What the fuck?”
“I know!” Douglas laughed, tracing a line up Sarah’s thigh. With his right hand, Sarah couldn’t help noticing. God, married guys were persistent.
“So then what happened?”
“Well, he is the prince, sort of.” Douglas shrugged. “So we all sort of slunk away and had our little picnic and later on when I nipped into the castle to use the loo, I heard them arguing. Max was yelling, ‘What happened? Wat ont>dead, I thought. Although”—Douglas shrugged again—“a week later he was.”
“Did anybody . . .” Sarah activated her inner thigh muscles, creating a barrier to Douglas’s northward drifting hand. “Did anybody tell the police this?”
“Well, I sure as fuck didn’t,” Douglas said. “And I don’t think Miles did either. Sherbatsky was in a bad way. Calling it a suicide was a kindness. I think he was high as a kite and toppled over in some sort of purple haze.”
Or Max figured out a way to “make him stop,” Sarah thought.
She’d have to double-check Douglas’s story with Miles or Daphne somehow. In the meantime, it was almost five and she had signed up to use the palace’s one working bathtub at 5:10. And she still needed to check in with Eleanor about tomorrow.
“Well, I’ve got to dash,” Sarah said. “Bathtub!”
“Need someone to scrub your back?” Douglas murmured, standing up, too, and pulling her by the hips toward him. Yep. Hard-on. Sarah thought about giving him a sharp knee jab, not so much for herself but on behalf of the current Mrs. Sexton, and controlled herself with effort. After all, she had been doing the Mata Hari act, and you couldn’t blame the guy.
“Thanks, I think I’ve got it covered,” she chirped, swinging her bag over her shoulder and heading off to Eleanor’s room. “See ya later.”
“Vixen,” Douglas growled, turning back to his watercolor.
The door to the Ernestines was shut, as Eleanor was vigilant about room temperature and “keeping her ladies cool.” Sarah gave a warning knock, opened the door, and was assaulted by a strong wave of chemicals. Eleanor—decked out in a Mexican serape—tossed Sarah a paper facemask and motioned for her to shut the door.
“I’m just finishing up!” Eleanor shouted through her own mask. “Look at my marvelous Princesse de Ligne!” Eleanor pointed at the portrait she was working on of a woman in the signature Ernestine three-quarter pose, dressed in yellow satin with bright pink bows, holding a plumed hat.
“Awesome,” Sarah said, dutifully. “Listen, I’ve got to get down to the bath, but Miles said you were going to Nelahozeves tomorrow?”
“Nela we call it, and yes, come with me!” Eleanor pleaded. “I don’t want to be there with Max all by myself. And you need to go, don’t you? To use the library?”
“Count me in,” Sarah said. “I’ll protect you.”
Eleanor waved her thanks and Sarah dashed down the back stairs to her room, grabbed a towel and her bag of toiletries, then hightailed up the stairs to the bathroom. Outside, a grinning Petr informed her that the boiler was “fixing” and she would “have very nice hot bath to make feel good and nice.”
This, Sarah soon discovered, was Czech-to-English for “only the hot water is working.” She managed to get the tub filled to about three inches before the room filled with steam. Sitting down naked on then nto-English narrow toilet, waiting for the water to cool, she noticed the envelope Jana had given her sticking out of her jeans pocket. Right, the letter to Max from the Hotel Gritti Palace in Venice. Plucking it from the pocket, she saw that the steam had actually unsealed the envelope. Sarah had a two-second argument with her conscience and then pulled the letter out, unfolded it carefully, and started to read.
To: Prince Maximilian Lobkowicz Anderson
From: Piergiorgio Vampa, Director of Hotel Security, Hotel Gritti Palace, Venice
Gentilissimo Principe,
As requested, I write to assure you about safekeeping of the item left in our care by Sig. Pertusato. This item is now in a maximum security cassaforte, and will remain there until you choose to claim it. Of this, I assure you personally. Furthermore, I beg leave to assure you that recent tragic events have in no way compromised the security of this hotel, and you can rest easy on this account. Please do not hesitate to contact me if you are in need of any further assistance.
On a personal note, I beg leave to add that I well remember our most amusing night in Paris last autumn. The jazz was le hot, and the mademoiselles were le hotter. You dog!
It pains me to add that Sig. Pertusato left our hotel without paying his bill. Naturally, I assume you will take care of this, but do not feel pressed. I know that you’re much occupied. Senore Pertusato says his mission to seduce the American girl to Prague was a success. Is she from California, too? All girls from America should be from California like Sig.ra Pamela Anderson. Are you related?
As always, your obedient servant,
Piergiorgio.
As Sarah sunk into her bath two thoughts came to mind: Men were ridiculous, in all cultures and across time. And Prince Max was hiding something in Venice.
FOURTEEN
There was traffic getting out of Prague, and a certain white-knuckled tension in finding the right highway, then Eleanor overshot the exit, so it was almost noon when they finally got to the Nelahozeves turnoff. Eleanor was all apologies, but Sarah enjoyed seeing a bit more of the Czech countryside. You probably couldn’t say that you had really seen a country if all you had seen was a city or two. You had to see where the food was grown, what the riverbanks looked like, and what the highway manners of the inhabitants were.
The Czech countryside between Prague and Nela was lightly rolling, and Highway 8 passed endless fields of yellow mustard flowers and hops, which felt right given the national predilection for mustard and beer. Sarah was a little disappointed not to see a cabbage farm or a sausage fan ntoow mctory, which would pretty much complete the local diet. When they overshot their exit, they had to get off at Roudnice, the location of another Lobkowicz castle that was still under the control of the Czech army. Max was lobbying for its return, though Sarah had to ask what on earth he was going to do with a two-hundred-room white elephant when he was having enough trouble with the properties already restituted to him. Roudnice had been a
training center for the SS, which was creepy enough, and then had been bombarded by the Soviets in a show of force. Sarah had heard it was quite the wreck. It sounded like a major headache, but then again it was hard to put yourself in the shoes of someone who had taken it upon himself to reassemble his family’s lost fortune.
Sarah was excited to see Nelahozeves, however. “ ‘One of Bohemia’s finest Renaissance castles,’ ” Sarah read aloud from a guidebook to try to ease the tension as they rerouted themselves. “Polyxena Lobkowicz purchased it in 1623. It says here that during the 1970s and 1980s the castle was used to display socialist modern art.” Eleanor shuddered in horror at the idea.
“There it is,” said Eleanor at last, as they wound their way through a little village spread along the green banks of the Vltava. Eleanor was pointing up at a lovely castle that dominated the tiny village, but Sarah’s eye had caught a historical marker.
“Oh, wait, there’s Dvorák’s birthplace,” said Sarah, craning her head backward. “You know, the composer? Can we stop for just a sec?”
What happened next was not technically Sarah’s fault, although she bore a certain amount of the blame. Instead of either ignoring Sarah’s request or driving on until she found a safe place to turn around, Eleanor rather abruptly threw the little Skoda into reverse, and began to back up the fifty yards or so to the Dvorák birthplace sign.
BAM. That was how Sarah would later describe the sound of the tractor hitting the back of their small white van. Why a tractor was careening around a blind corner was also a good question, and might have something to do with the traditional Czech farmers’ breakfast beer, but soon Sarah found herself standing in a crowd of people, all of whom were speaking Czech, gesturing and pointing at where the tractor, a fine piece of socialist-era machinery, had rather pornographically embedded itself in the hind end of the Skoda.
