by Magnus Flyte
“They took Elisa’s private jet, to get there before the old lady croaks,” added Douglas.
“She and Max make a lovely couple,” Fiona said, sipping tea.
“She’s a cougar,” Suzi said, glancing slightly at Sarah.
“I don’t know why they are called cougars,” Godfrey said. “Female cougars can mate many times during the year, and when they are in heat they make a blood-curdling cry, very like that of a human. But they don’t mate especially with younger males.”
“Makes sense if those two got hitched,” Douglas said. “Keep all the lolly in the family.”
“Enough gossip,” said Miles sternly. “We all need to be in high gear to make the museum opening happen. If you need extra help or you run into a problem, let me know immediately and I’ll do what I can. Also, I’m happy to report that the worst of the earsplitting construction will be finished today. We will then move on to painting, so please be aware as you move through the hallways that there will be wet paint everywhere. Also, I’m sure you’re all very upset about Eleanor, and so am I,” said Miles. “Her suicide is very tragic. But the best thing we can do for her, for ourselves, and for the museum is to make the opening a success. That will honor her memory and the work she loved.”
“You could hang a little picture of her in the Ernestine Room,” said Bernard with a catch in his voice. As usual, he had a piece of sewing in his hands. A piece of red velvet trimmed with gold. Sarah noticed that his hands were shaking.
As they argued about the best way to honor Eleanor, and whether it was still appropriate to have a costume party for the staff, Sarah slipped out.
“Sarah, wait.” It was Bernard. His eyes were red and swollen. Of course, he had really been closest to Eleanor, they had always been off gossiping together.
“I thought I’d get some flowers,” he said miserably. “You know, to place in the courtyard at the well. A tribute to Eleanor.”
S
arah patted his arm. “They might not let you,” she said. “But that’s a nice idea.”
“Will you come with me?” he pleaded.
Sarah shifted uncomfortably. “I’m so sorry,” she said, knowing how callous she must sound. “I’m really behind on my work. I’ll come with you later this afternoon, okay? I just need to get some things . . .” Her voice trailed ofӀce trailf.
Bernard looked as if he might argue with her, and then slumped off.
Sarah made her way back down to her room. With the construction—and its covering clamor—finishing up today, she needed to go now.
Max didn’t want her going without him. And what was between him and his cousin? Was she being very stupid?
Probably. But in that case, now was no time to stop being stupid.
As she passed the place where the workmen had left their tools the night before, Sarah looked around, then casually picked up a sledgehammer and kept going.
THIRTY-SIX
Sarah changed from shorts into long pants, in case there was crawling to be done. She took the headlamp she used to examine manuscripts. It was a little bulky for spelunking, but she wanted backup in case the flashlight app on her phone failed. She also took some waterproof matches, and, at the last second, a bottle of water. It might be a long day.
As she shut her bedroom door behind her and turned right, deeper into the building rather than back to the stairway and the light, she pondered the difference between stupid and brave.
Success?
Sarah re-created in her mind the architectural drawings Max had shown her. The closest of the unsealed entries into the tunnels was in the boiler room. She found a person-sized hole beneath a sheet of corrugated metal in the corner. The sides were lined with iron rungs. She climbed down about ten feet, and then, sure enough, a tunnel opened up in front of her. Moving cautiously, she headed into it.
Almost at once, the height of the ceiling dropped. Her headlamp, better suited to scholarship than exploration, barely illuminated a few feet in front of her. She pulled out her phone and clicked on the flashlight. The compass on the app was no help—it was spinning crazily—but she didn’t think she had far to go. She was still fairly close to her room, which was presumably next to the hidden library.
A junction in the tunnel opened up, with grilled gates at both openings. It seemed like the little opening to her left was the one that ran under the library. The gate wasn’t locked and was only about three feet tall. She pulled it open with a creepy eeek of its hinges, bent over, and looked inside. It was dark, and small, and smelled fairly putrid. Sarah dropped to her hands and knees and began crawling through the passageway, telling herself she wasn’t claustrophobic and that Max had said that the rats had been exterminated. At best she would only have to endure this a few feet.
But the passage twisted right and then left and then left again. The walls were hewn out of bedrock, rough to the touch. She looked up. Just above and in front of her was a small trapdoor, not much larger than she was. It had a rusty old padlock on it. This must be it. Sarah took a deep breath and pulled the sledgehammer she’d been dragging up alongside her. It was tough to really get a good swing in the narrow space—something she hadn’t calculated when choosing this particular tool. On the first swing, she missed the lock entirely but gave the trapdoor a good thump. She managed to whack it the second time, bր2ut it didn’t break. On the third try, the lock’s hasps fell out of the wood entirely, and she realized she was through. She pushed the trapdoor up, surprised at how easily it moved. Her heart leapt up into her chest and she shoved her torso up into the dark room. She looked around the small space, her headlight flashing on pieces of furniture—a bed, a chair, some books, a pair of familiar underwear. With a disappointing groan, she realized she was back in her own room. She had never noticed this door in the floor before—she looked at the back of the trapdoor and saw how neatly it was constructed so as to be nearly invisible.
Well, it might explain how someone had snuck the cross into her room. Nico?
She could hear the faint sounds of construction up above her, which reminded her that she’d better try again quickly. She dropped back into the tunnel, the fetid air filling her lungs again. She managed to push the screws that held the hasp back together so that the lock didn’t look damaged, if you didn’t look too closely.
She continued crawling through the tunnel, which got smaller. She could hear water coursing through pipes. The tunnel climbed up, then down, then up again. It was too difficult to move on her hands and knees and carry her phone in front of her, so she shoved it back in her pocket. The tunnel was much darker without the flashlight and she had never longed to stand up so badly. She came to junctions with other tunnels, but it seemed impossible to determine where exactly she was. The floor became damp, which was a little alarming. If this was a storm drain and it began to rain . . . she didn’t want to think about it.
She was crawling along when suddenly she felt nothing under her hands and she began to fall forward. She screamed, felt a huge uprush of cold air that seemed to come from the center of the earth, and, at the last possible second, managed to catch hold of a protruding stone and push herself back up. She sat back on her heels, breathing for a second, her pulse racing and her mouth dry. She had almost fallen into what—a well? A drainage tunnel that went straight down? The famous hell portal? She found a small stone under her hand and dropped it. It was six seconds before she heard a faint watery plonk far below. Jesus. That had been a close one. If she had fallen hundreds of feet down into a well . . .
She skirted the well carefully and kept crawling along, and now there was actual water she was crawling through. She began to wonder if she should turn back, but would the water recede or get deeper? At least she was crawling slightly uphill. Sarah crept along for several more minutes before she realized she was making a huge mistake. The water was beginning to move faster and get deeper. After a few hundred yards, it was almost up to her belly. Sarah began to admit to herself that she was panicking. No one would gu
ess she was down here except Max, and he was on his way to Venice.
Maybe he had planned this, known she wouldn’t be able to resist exploring on her own and had sent her to a watery death. She could drown and her body might not be found for days, if ever. She’d be just a contrail of energy in the palace.
Why had she come here alone? Hubris. Like all the great heroes of antiquity, she was going to be brought down by her own pride and ambition.
She had to keep climbing up. Up was where the water was coming from, and if she could pass the inlet, she would be safe and dry again. If this tunnel even passed the inlet. Her knees ached, she was shivering and trying not ۀd tryingto let her brain flood itself with cortisol, which would only increase her panic. She must think straight. She must not give up. She must keep going. A rat floated past her, squealing in distress, then caught a jutting rock and scampered up through a hole. She must move faster, look for any way out of this tunnel. The sledgehammer was slowing her down, but she would need it if she found an escape hatch.
Suddenly, with a gush and a roar, the water got deeper. She fought to keep her head above it, scraping her scalp on the roof of the tunnel. She thought about her mom, and Max, and Pols, and, somewhat absurdly, Beethoven. She braced herself against the walls, trying not to be swept away and under the deadly current.
She should pray to someone, but who? Not the fake Infant of Prague, for sure. To her father, who maybe was watching over her? No.
“Please, Luigi,” she whispered. “Help me. Don’t let me die in this tunnel.” As she struggled to hold on, her headlight lit up something shiny on a rock sticking out of the wall at eye level.
An American penny.
She reached up to grab it, and as she did, she saw the trapdoor above her. Dustier than the last, with an older-looking lock.
With a huge effort, she raised the sledgehammer up from under the water and tried to pry open the lock. It stuck fast.
She pushed on the trapdoor, but it didn’t move. She maneuvered herself so she could put her shoulder into it, and felt some give. Hating to put her face in the water in case there was no more air when she came up again, she took a deep breath and bent over and put her back against the trapdoor, then used her thighs to crush her own body up against the door as hard as she possibly could. The choice was drown or break her back.
Her headlamp went out, dead. She was now in total darkness, underwater.
With the effort of her life, she pushed up again, her back crushed, her thighs screaming. The door gave. From underwater she could hear a creak, then a crash as something fell over.
With a gasp, she pulled herself up through the hole into the room.
It was completely dark, a darkness that was utterly impenetrable.
Sarah snapped her fingers and listened for the acoustics. The room was not large. She pulled out her phone, which was wet. And dead.
She remembered the matches in her pocket. They were supposed to be waterproof. This would be the test.
The tiny light caught edges of glinting corners, large objects, furniture. Sarah lit another match and felt her way around. She moved her hands lightly over things, terrified she would break something, trying to guess what she was touching. A globe. A chair. A rug. Finally, she found a table, and the heavy base of . . . yes, a candelabra. With a few candles still in it, stumpy but serviceable. She lit the wicks.
Before her was a large desk. A sort of cloak was folded neatly over the chair behind it. She held her candles over a newspaper laid out on top of the desk—an International Herald Tribune dated March 10, 1948. Sarah read the headline and top story: news of the death of Czechoslovak Foreign Minister Jan Masaryk, found dead in his pajamas in the courtyard of the ministry under hiۀstry unds bathroom window. Was this the news that prompted Max’s grandfather to seal the library and leave his beloved Czechoslovakia forever?
She thought she heard a voice behind her, a whisper, but when she turned, she saw only a small wax doll dressed in a tattered piece of brocade sitting on a small table. She picked it up, reassuring herself that the thing wasn’t alive. The doll was a copy of the Infant of Prague. Or was Pols right and the figure in the Carmelite church was just another copy and this was the . . . real one? It seemed unfair that she should be holding it, given that up until this moment, she had done nothing but make fun of the little guy. Pure of heart she was not. She put him down quickly.
The rushing sound of the water was lessening. She looked down through the hatch and saw that the water was indeed receding, down now to about an inch, and moving more slowly. She should leave now, in case it started up again. But there was so much to look at . . .
She opened the central drawer of the desk. There was a glinting and sharp-looking paper knife in a leather sheath. A paper knife or a weapon? Also, two small books. She pulled these out, opening the heavy leather cover of the first one and trying to make out the Latin inscription. It was dedicated to Rudolf, Holy Roman Emperor and a whole bunch of other royal titles, and was from his most humble servants, etcetera, etcetera . . . John Dee and Edward Kelley. The inside of the book was filled with diagrams in a minute hand.
Sarah picked up the second book. The frontispiece was inscribed with a single name: Tygge Ottensen Brahe. Tycho Brahe. She flipped through the pages. There were strange drawings, and lists with crabbed instructions and diagrams next to them. Recipes. Formulas.
A toast to Brahe.
Was there a formula in this book for the drug? Is that how the 7th prince had created it?
Sarah held up the candelabra and moved to the shelves behind the desk. She found a skull marked with strange symbols and ruby eyes; small, curiously shaped stones; books, books, and more books; a row of philters and vials. She squinted and tried to make out the tiny labels in Latin. Pulvis Golem.
Dust of the golem?
“Are you shitting me?” Sarah asked out loud.
This room was Max’s rightful inheritance. A secret cache of treasures—religious, literary, scientific, and alchemical. Grandfather Max had sacrificed glittering works of art to the Nazis and communists, but not these strange secrets.
Moving around the room, she found a window frame filled in with cement blocks. The missing window from Max’s map, she realized, though it must have given onto an airshaft since they were well underground, a shaft that had been filled in during some renovation. She discovered another, smaller desk and, on top of it, a leather briefcase, oddly modern in this setting. She looked at the initials on it—JP. Sarah opened it and held the candles over the papers. It took a moment to process the fact that the letters and files were in English. TOP SECRET was stamped across all of them. How funny, she thought. Just like in the movies.
Sarah glanced through the files: letters from the 1960s and 1970s. How did they get here, if the library had been sealed since 1948? She reۀ 1948? Smembered the penny, and pulled it out of her pocket. It was dark with age, but she rubbed it against the cloak she was wearing until she could read t
he year: 1982.
Under the table, a violin case rested on a small footstool. She bent down and examined the case. Engraved on the top were three violins: two facing forward and the third one facing back. Placing the candelabra on the floor next to her, she gently removed the violin and handled it. She felt something shift inside the instrument. Something that sounded like papers.
Her hands were shaking as she carried the violin to the desk and set it gently on top, then retrieved the candelabra. She opened the desk drawer and tested the paper knife against the tip of her finger. Instantly a drop of blood appeared.
Gently, Sarah ran the knife around the perimeter of the violin, searching for weaknesses in the glue that bound front and back together. When she found a point of entry, she slid the edge around. Holding her breath, she lifted the front of the instrument off and pulled out the small sheaf of letters bound by a faded ribbon that lay within.
Unsterbliche Geliebte, read the looping familiar script, and her heart leapt into her mout
h.
Immortal Beloved.
THIRTY-SEVEN
Her first thought was that she didn’t have the right. Letters from Beethoven hidden in a violin and addressed to the Immortal Beloved. Letters that the world had never seen. She was only a doctoral candidate from Boston. She didn’t even have the credentials to get access on her own to the Beethoven archives in Bonn.
Her second thought was that she was about to become the most famous Beethoven scholar in the world.
Her hands were sweaty, and filthy. She needed gloves. Even though she was still wet, and freezing, Sarah whipped off her T-shirt. She turned it inside out, wrapped it around her fingers, then gently smoothed the letters across the desk. There were three. Sarah moved the candelabra closer.
They were written in German, of course, in Luigi’s distinct and atrocious handwriting. She turned first to the letter, which began: Unsterblicher Geliebten. It was undated, although the word “Vienna” could be made out in the upper right corner. Authentic? (In 1911 the editor of Die Musik had published a “new” letter to the Immortal Beloved, which included a song fragment. This had turned out to be a total forgery.)
Sarah squinted, tracing the spiky and erratically punctuated lines of Beethoven’s untidy scrawl.
Immortal Beloved—
Yes, I must speak once more of her to you, L, as I can speak to no one else. She [the handwriting became illegible] many faces. Imagine my wretchedness—almost to madness—when now I turn to her and find not the restoration—too brief always—of what was LOST, but instead only things I do not [again the writing was illegible]. Only my extreme bad health drove me to her arms last night, but it was as if I dreamed. I heard not, saw not, what was before me. But instead such a rushing in mހ.y ears and then my violin sonata in D flat—you know it—played by, if you please, [crossed out sentence] well you will not believe me. Perhaps the loss of my hearing has moved even past the secret wisdom of your ancients. But what is this new gift from the Beloved? Or curse? I do not understand it. Who can we ask?
